


Indelible Ink

by ctimene



Series: Under the Ink [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Blow Jobs, Breaking Up & Making Up, Frottage, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, M/M, Season 2? I don't know her, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25823023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: Matt’s working a lot of late nights now, with the firm getting on its feet, and as the weeks drag on Foggy becomes used to conducting a relationship by phone, muttering his I love yous out of earshot of the other artists and getting through some long mornings with the half-forgotten sleepy memory of someone holding him in the middle of the night, even if Matt was gone when the sun came up.It’s enough, until it isn’t.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Under the Ink [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873666
Comments: 59
Kudos: 207





	Indelible Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Note: When I wrote Invisible Ink it seemed like a terribly bright idea to name some of my basically OCs after two of Josie’s regulars, Clint and Ben. I am not smart, so Clint is not Clint Barton and Ben is not Ben Ulrich. Also everyone not explicitly given a name is called Steve. Can’t foresee any problems there.
> 
> Second note: I have been sitting on most of this for more than three years but fuck it baby, we’re quarantined
> 
> CN for: Needles, references to PTSD, consensual sex while under the influence. 
> 
> PS: If there's anything you want added to the content note or the tags, please shout

“A friendly devil? I can do a friendly devil.”

“Not friendly, ‘xactly. He wasn't friendly. But good. He was good.”

When Nelson’s first opened, it had three rooms (the big ‘un out front, and two private studios) and a storage cupboard. Nine months in and it has three rooms and The Office, and they have to store supplies in a massive dresser Foggy got for peanuts off an Italian grandmother. The hipsters love it.

Point is, business is going okay and there are plenty of times clients want a private consultation and all the studios are busy. The office barely has enough space for two chairs, but there's a door with a lock, and that's enough for most.

Like Marissa, who is nineteen with a brassy smile, loud voice and blank, stunned eyes that had Foggy ushering her to the office as soon as she asked for him. She’s got bruises on her wrist and she wants a devil on her thigh. “A good devil?” It sets off alarm bells. “Who exactly are we talking about here? A boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend?” She’s the right age for a dumb-love tattoo.

She laughs, and it's a good laugh, loud and angular, fits her better than anything else he's seen her do so far. “No, no, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen. You read the papers, man?” She plucks a _Bulletin_ clipping out of her bag. “Guy in a mask, fighting crime. Kitchen’s own hero.”

Foggy has heard of the ‘devil', come to think of it. Mostly from clients calling him an asshole who beat up their cousin, brother, neighbour, but then the Nelson’s crowd is very much a clientele of two halves. “Your hero?” he guesses.

“Yeah.” She says it hard, and he’s not stupid, he’s not going to ask what this _hero_ saved her from.

They bounce some ideas back and forth, cause yeah, it turns out a good devil is a bit tricky, from an art perspective. The result is a little Disney, a little Dreamworks, a nineties cartoon hero with a kink store tail. He gives her the finished sketch and tells her to think it over, and refuses to let her book in before the start of next week. “If you wanna come in and talk about it, though, I’m always here,” he adds, and she holds his gaze for a moment before she leaves.

“Discount for her, if she comes back?” Carla asks, because she’s smart. Foggy nods. “We gonna need to pull in a few more assholes this month to cover costs,” she grumbles, which is an exaggeration, even if Foggy’s put off his plan of buying Josie out by, like, a decade. (It’s cool, it’s totally cool, it’d just be nice if his rent didn’t _double_ again. There’s money pouring into Hell’s Kitchen, but not into his cash register. Yet. Eternal optimism.)

“Maybe your rich lawyer boyfriend could get more ink?” Katie suggests from behind them.

“You calling Matt an asshole? Accurate, dead on, very perceptive. Except for the rich part.” Foggy sighs. The women roll their eyes simultaneously, _witchcraft_. “I am forced to support his extravagant lifestyle of forgetting to eat and walking into walls while he gets his firm’s paperwork in order.”

“Objection,” Matt says from the doorway, and Foggy does _not_ startle and then skip across the room, he is totally one hundred percent adjusted to his _boyfriend_ dropping by with ninja-like stealth and it definitely doesn’t make his heart twirl. “It was stairs last time, not a wall.”

Carla clucks her tongue against her teeth, and Foggy has a brief hope that someone else is joining him on the Matthew Murdock Health and Safety Review Board, before he realises she’s waving the latest set of licensing forms for his final signature. “Ride off into the sunset later, sign now.”

“You’re the boss,” Foggy says, because he’s the only person within a three block radius who still thinks that joke is funny. It totally is. “Urgh, I actually have to read these, Matt, go pick up dinner and I’ll catch you up?”

“I’ll guide you cross the street,” Katie offers. She is secretly a sweetheart.

Dinner, for the past four weeks, has been from the Mayflower Thai place across the street, because he designed their sign and tattooed it on Mrs Krishna’s back, so the discount is too much for even Matt to cry poverty. They’ve bolted down 176 of the 232 items on the menu. (It has done terrible things to Foggy’s waistline, but wonderful things to his tastebuds. Matt’s even put on weight, albeit in the form of muscles on top of muscles which- okay, no, Foggy has zero complaints, none, it’s not even unfair because he’s pretty sure he appreciates muscles on Matt more than he’d like having them himself.)

It takes him a couple of minutes to go through the papers, and another few to find a working pen (they’re all out of ink! The irony! It is so inconvenient!) and Matt’s picked up the takeaway and left by the time he gets to the Mayflower. Foggy turns his feet to home, to his place. They always go to his place, because Foggy has working eyes and sees Matt’s ‘stylish’ apartment for the soulless husk it is, even before the billboard.

He almost misses Matt. Almost walks right past him. Which is distinctly un-Foggy like behaviour, but then Matt _is_ loitering in an alley, which is distinctly un-Matt like (Foggy assumes. He’s pretty sure lawyering doesn’t involve alleys, unless they’re, like, evil lawyers. Which Matt is not.)

See, he smells something off before he spots it. Or rather, something not off, something delicious and spicy, aka, the bag of food, set down neatly _next to a dumpster_ at the mouth of one of Hell’s Kitchen’s seedier thoroughfares. He’s preparing for one hell of a speech about the sacrosanct nature of Mayflower food and the profane taint of dumpsters when he sees Matt being steered down the alley by two teens of the lanky, unwashed variety.

He doesn’t have to see the knife to guess it’s there.

“Hey!” His mouth works faster than his brain. Normally not a good thing, but it has the desired effect: lanky teen one turns around and, yep, there’s the knife, and Foggy starts charging and yells again: “HEY!”

The rage is really something. Rage and fear: hot and cold. The kids are younger than he thought, maybe fourteen, but that’s not going to stop him removing their teeth through the back of their throats.

The next three seconds go like this:

Matt calls out - No, or Don’t, or some other silly word that Foggy is not going to listen to. The first kid drops Matt’s arm, takes a step towards Foggy, freezes, turns tail and flees. Except, that sounds fast - it’s probably the slowest, weirdest, hyperreal thing Foggy’s ever seen, except for _Avatar_. The second guy shouts after him, “What the fuck?”, but still hasn’t dropped Matt’s arm, _big mistakes are being made_ , and there’s maybe ten feet before Foggy gets to him when the first mugger shouts back:

“Look at him! Hell Dog, man, not worth it!” And then lanky teen two is so much dust in the wind and the sound of fast feet.

Foggy’s nonplussed for a second before he remembers he’s got his arms out in a sleeveless hoodie that _totally works_ on him. Okay, from a distance, he could see it: tattoos, dark clothing, plenty of hair, wide shoulders. Maybe. If you’d never seen an actual biker in your life. Foggy’s more broad than brawn.

Wow, Matt almost got mugged by idiots. Poor bastard. Foggy’ll mock him mercilessly later. First, though: “You okay, Matty?”

“I'm fine,” he says, cool and calm as anything. Foggy’s more out of breath than Matt is. “This isn’t how these things usually work out for me,” he says, sort of wry, and Foggy is appalled, even as his brain finally catches up with proceedings and points out the logic of mugging a blind guy. _Morals_ , he reminds his brain.

“Jesus, Matty, how often do you get robbed?”

Matt shrugs. “Bad neighbourhood.”

“Great neighbourhood,” Foggy corrects. “Shitty people.”

“They were, uh, scared of you. I think.” And Matt’s smirking and trying not to laugh, which, hey, at least he’s not traumatised by the attempted mugging.

(Foggy might be. Traumatised. Why won’t his pulse slow down?)

Still, at least he can pretend to be offended, that’s a good schtick, definitely no panic here: “I happen to be very intimidating to the eye, Matty, which is why you’re the only idiot in New York I can date ethically. All others would be afeard.”

Matt does laugh then, and Foggy wraps an arm around him to feel the shake of it against his chest, presses a kiss to Matt’s temple. He’s safe, they’re safe, but, Christ, his heart is still in his mouth, pounding on and on. The adrenaline starts to leech out of his blood, tastes bitter on his tongue. He only notices when the ends of his nails dig into skin that his right hand is still wrapped into a fist. It’s awful, choking and tense and fevered, and he hates it.

“Your heart is racing,” Matt says, and lays a palm on Foggy’s chest.

“My first mugging,” he admits, kind of surprised by how embarrassed he is now, the fear and anger draining away to something slick and yellow that coats his stomach with shame. “Gimme a minute?”

Matt nods, but he must be picking up on something in Foggy’s voice, cause he keeps his hand over his heart, runs the other over his arm, where Foggy's skin is warm and clammy, hairs pricked up. A beat. Two. Then: “Given the circumstances, would now be a good time to revisit the concept of filthy alley sex?”

“It is six pm, Matt, it is broad daylight!” If his scandalised tone sounds a little forced, at least his smile isn't.

“Really? Couldn't tell,” Matt replies, looping his arms around Foggy’s neck, and hey, he's read enough TV Tropes to recognise distracted by the sexy when he sidles up in a too-tight t-shirt. (He is _not_ distracted by the sexy - at least, not until Matt starts smirking, the manipulative bastard. He is a little distracted by the funny, and the adorable. Basically, the whole package is good, and about an inch away from his face, and Foggy defies anyone not to find that distracting.)

So he ducks his head for a kiss, a just one kiss that becomes two, three, and Matt shifts a little closer and a little more ‘til they're plastered against each other. Foggy fits, softly, into all of Matt’s absences - where he needs to eat more, relax more. Eventually, he hopes, he'll soften them up to. Except for the abs. The abs can stay.

He curls a couple of fingers under Matt’s shirt, where the top of his hip juts out from low-slung jeans, and where Foggy’s intimately familiar with the word he’s inked on him. The moment he makes contact Matt moves forward, rising in his toes to rub himself on Foggy’s thigh, a whine in his throat.

Five months in, Foggy’s used to that reaction. Not tired of it, though. Not tired at all.

Still: “We should probably not lurk in alleys. Those extremely threatening middle schoolers could come back,” he murmurs in Matt’s ear, sufficiently, uh, _distracted_ for the thought to be more of a joke than an actual fear. That said, he’s not quite strong willed enough to pull out of Matt’s arms.

“They're four blocks away,” Matt says, confidently. “Probably. By now.” He looks a little rueful. “The food will be getting cold though.”

The food is gone. It’s totally fair, Mayflower food should not be abandoned, being adopted into a loving stomach is truly the best outcome. Foggy doubles back, wheedles some extra prawn crackers for _heroism_ and services to snacking, and by the time they’re eating, Foggy with his (washed!) hands and Matt with chopsticks, the show off, he’s almost forgotten the alley. The knife.

“Kirsten thinks we might’ve found an office,” Matt says as Foggy washes up the containers for his ever growing tupperware collection.

“That’s great!” Foggy struggles to enthuse about Kirsten. He likes her enough, but there’s a distinct vibe. It’s not… entirely about Matt, but there’s been a lot of pointed use of the word partner on both sides. (He can hold up his hands here, he can be a real petty bastard when he wants. It’s endearing! Sorta.)

“Mm.” Matt smirks like he can see right through him. “It’s a walk up near 52nd and 10th.”

“Oh, sweet, you’ll only have to avoid three boy scouts trying to help you cross the road each morning. Wait, is this the start of some earnest ploy to get me to move furniture? Cause I’m not sure we’ve reached that point in our relationship.”

“Just hoping you'll wish me luck,” Matt says, with the sly smile that says he knows he doesn’t have to seduce Foggy, but he likes trying anyway.

“I swear, Murdock, if you make a joke about the Nelsons’ Irish luck rubbing off on you-”

“ _Murdock_. Technically also Irish.”

“Irish Catholic. Everyone knows the Protestants are where the real luck is. Like… potatoes. And, um, blarney?” Actually, Foggy’s not even sure his family were Irish. Maybe Nana Nelson just really liked Guinness.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” Matt murmurs against his mouth, and Foggy swallows his grin until his back hits the wall. Walls are definitely _a thing_ for them. He can’t count the number of times he’s had to stop Matt trying to lift him against one with a gentle reminder that he is not a 110 pound slip of a law student. This wall in particular holds a special place in Foggy’s heart, and he rolls his shoulders back against it until Matt presses them there, holds him still, just for a moment, just to show he can.

Matt tries to get on his knees but Foggy drags him back up. “Nu-uh, my turn.” He makes some strategic readjustments: Matt’s T-shirt, off, so he can watch him shiver against the cold gloss paint; his glasses on the counter, because _fuck,_ he loves Matt’s eyes, and also not crushing his spectacles during wild but sexy flailing; and undoing his fly before stepping back, because the way Matt stays against the wall, boxers bulging through his open jeans, stomach twitching, teeth pressed into his bottom lip, just waiting for Foggy to put a hand on him…

Foggy’s mouth waters.

He drags his palms down Matt’s sides to grip his hips and levers himself to the floor. Matt’s deliciously still and quiet as Foggy inches down his pants, though the hairs on his thighs rise up and his hips twitch. When Foggy gets a hand on his dick, though, hard and hot and thickening in his grip, Matt yells, sounds almost surprised, and it’s absolutely an ego trip to see, hear and feel that self-control break when Foggy sucks Matt’s cockhead into his mouth.

Matt rarely takes the Lord’s name in vain, or blasphemes, like Foggy does the moment his mouth isn’t otherwise occupied, but he keeps up a litany of _Foggy, fuck, Foggy, Foggy_ that’s music to his ears. Foggy hums in agreement with every cut-off curse, and has to shut his own eyes in pleasure when Matt’s hand drops into his hair, applying just the slightest hint of pressure. One day he’s going to talk Matt into fucking his face, but for now he’s happy to work him over with long, deep bobs and hard sucks while Matt’s thighs shake under his palms.

“Foggy, I'm gonna-” Matt warns, and Foggy hums an acknowledgement but doesn't stop. It's been a week since they exchanged test results, and to be honest, they’re both still a bit nervy about ditching condoms, but boy, does he _not_ miss the taste of latex. “Goddamn,” Matt swears neatly as he comes with just the head of his dick in Foggy's mouth, so that he chokes a little on the swallow. It's not exactly sexy, from his perspective, but when he looks up Matt’s still shaking a little, chest shiny with sweat, and when Foggy presses his lips against those abs, Matt hisses, overstimulated, and Foggy has never felt so smug.

Later, after gathering their things (it's amazing how far things are _strewn_ , when the kitchen is so small) they make it the four steps to Foggy’s bedroom. It takes forever.

Later still, the setting sun intrudes, and Foggy only forgives it because it gives him light enough to really see Matt, with not a speck of clothing to spoil the sight.

“I can feel you staring,” he mumbles from the pillow. “It's my fifth sense.”

“Liar,” Foggy mutters. “Let me enjoy the view.”

“No, let me,” Matt says, and then moves faster than any fucked-out blind man has any right to. Foggy ends up underneath him, equal parts impressed and winded (and, yeah, okay, a little bit turned on). “Tell me about them,” he says, and splays his hands across Foggy’s chest.

“My pecs? They’re my grandmother’s, actually, family heirlooms-” Matt pulls a face. “Seriously, I’ve never talked you through the tattoos?” It’s sort of a thing he does, even to people who can see them, as soon as he gets a bottle in his hand.

“You tried, a couple of times. Back when I was at Columbia. I stopped you. The idea of getting an incomplete picture was … frustrating.” He bites his lip, because he knows exactly what that does to Foggy (he did even before the whole rant about _carmine_ , Matt, seriously, no, you are ruining colours, I have to work with colours-)

“You wanted me naked and at your mercy for the tattoo conversation?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Hot,” Foggy says, without feeling but with a smile ready at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, start here. First tattoo, from my uncle. It's of barbed wire, because I was a teenager of great deepity and it looked badass.”

“Looked?”

“There may be a nearby cat in a bow somewhat lessening the effect now.” He guides Matt’s fingers along the length of wire, over each knot and back.

“It’s scarred,” Matt says, surprised, and hey, he must have picked up something about Thou Dost Not Scar The Client because a tiny frown forms between his brows.

“Not the tattoo. That was a scratch from Pedro the Magnificent, the cat I mentioned. It was there before the ink. I got sick of pretending I got scarred in an awesome death-defying stunt rather than, you know, mauled by my sister’s cat. And I guess it means there’s one you can feel, that's cool.”

He walks Matt’s fingers down his sleeves, across his sides and hips, up to his chest piece. This one he has to explain in detail, all of Katie’s geometric work, her biggest commission at the time. Towers of grey blocks, falling in and reforming, golden, in the centre.

“Man, I'm really struggling for a description that isn't Minecraft, but artier,” he says after a brief babble.

“It's New York,” Matt says, soft in the half light. Foggy wonders if Matt can feel the way his chest fills with warmth under his fingertips.

There's definite a risk of a moment developing, a moment when Foggy might not be able to slip his _I love you_ into a phonecall or a shopping list, casual and nonthreatening, and there's a brief flutter of terror against his ribs.

He's saved by Matt leaning down to kiss him, as chastely as he can manage. (So, with about a third of his usual filth, and teeth.) Unfortunately, he follows the kiss with another display of unwarranted athleticism, swinging off Foggy’s low-slung bed and rooting around for his clothes.

“What, pants, no, it's like eight hours too early for pants.”

“Big day tomorrow, I have to wear a suit.” Foggy wrinkles his nose, but doesn't bother to tell Matt. Sure, he remembers the suave, sexy suited Matt of yesteryear, but T-shirts and jeans have been a good look. Sweatpants even better.

(If Foggy was to tell a really terrible joke, which he wouldn't, so very out of character, he'd say that dating a blind guy has made him very concerned about _accessibility_.

He has told that joke maybe seven times. So far.)

Matt hesitates as he puts on a shirt. It's not the one he arrived in, but apart from his suits, much of his wardrobe now hangs out at Foggy’s. “There might be more late nights now. I'll crash at mine more, but it's not- I'd rather be here.”

Foggy smiles, a little dopey. “Happy to have you. But don't worry about coming by here late, you know where the spare key is and I sleep like the dead, I won't notice you come in.”

“I know,” Matt says.

“It'd be nice to see you in the morning,” Foggy continues. “But since I won't-” He ambles over and kisses Matt, with a loud smack, on the forehead. “Good luck. Have fun storming the castle.”

* * *

Matt calls about halfway through the day. “Hey. We got the office and a case.” Foggy prepares a lewd comment, but he goes on: “I’m gonna have to work late tonight, I can’t come by.”

“No big, you go. Hit the ground running. Don’t actually hit the ground though, babe, you trip enough as is. What’s the case?”

There’s a long pause. “It occurs to me that we haven’t really had a conversation about attorney-client confidentiality.”

A warm drop of embarrassment starts rolling from the top of his head down his spine. “Shit, sorry.” he lowers his voice. “Did I just, like, commit a crime?” Ben, behind him, snorts, and Foggy turns to shoot him a glare.

Matt laughs, short and strained. “No. But there are things I can’t tell you now. Even if I want to. A lot of things.” He gets it. Marissa's blank eyes, a dozen covered up scars, the clients who cry - there are plenty of things he wouldn't tell anyone else about, and he's not covered by the law. In the background of the call he hears Kirsten say Matt’s name. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’d wish you good luck, but you don’t need it.”

“Love you,” Matt says, and hangs up.

He’s not going to make a big deal of it, he’s not, he is chill and calm and good, but it might be the first time Matt’s said it. _Boom!_

“Stop dancing, it’s weird and you’ll get-” splash “- coffee everywhere.” Carla is actually going to quit one day, and Foggy will be inconsolable, but for now he twirls her across the linoleum, humming the cantina song from Star Wars.

He wakes next morning to a voicemail from Matt. It's a pale shadow of waking next to the real thing, but he can deal, he's not developing a worrying codependency. “You could come over today. I, uh, I'd like you to come over. Might have company.” He can't decide if Matt’s morning growl sounds tired or turned on, but both make his fingers itch to touch.

Hillary Gutierrez sells the best French pastries in New York, and Foggy doesn’t just say that, loudly and often whenever she’s in earshot, for the extra croissant she slips in the bag when he visits. (He says it cause she’s one of the few spies his mother has left in Hell’s Kitchen, and the least likely to retire, so he needs to keep her sweet. Also, free pastry.)

A bag of Gutierrez goodness is a fitting tribute to a successful first week (so Matt’s firm has technically been open for a day, it’s Saturday, the working week is done, and, yeah, okay Foggy might’ve got a little too used to seeing his boyfriend on the reg. Food! Food will conceal his horrible affliction of feelings.) He’s even willing to share with Kirsten because he is a good person. He is.

When he answers the door, Matt is disappointingly be-shirted. On a Saturday, which are traditionally Matt-goes-shirtless-and-Foggy-ogles days. He's about to complain when he notices a second person in the apartment. A ridiculously good-looking second person also wearing one of Matt’s shirts.

He's not the jealous type (okay, he is, he really is) but it's a very good thing that the second person is Karen Page.

“Well, look what the Matt dragged in,” he manages before she rushes up to hug him.

“Jesus, Foggy, it is so good to see you.” She punctuates this by hitting him, really unjustifiably hard, on the arm.

“Ow, yeah, I’m really feeling the joy of my presence right now.”

“You didn’t tell me about this!” She gesticulates, with both hands, to Matt, who is drinking coffee quite innocently some feet away. “And he didn’t tell me about this until five minutes ago, so he’s not off the hook either.” Foggy narrates the gestures - really quite good, if utterly inarticulate - before poking Karen on the nose.

“Well, you didn’t tell me you were back in New York and I didn’t have a forwarding address,” he responds, aiming for adorably argumentative but apparently hitting a nerve, because she looks crestfallen. “And he didn’t tell me- oh, okay, no, I am connecting the dots, lawyer, client, I presume I’m allowed to know this now?” Comforting nodding abounds. “Okay, Matt, you did everything right, you’re perfect, you’re an angel, have a pastry.”

They sit at Matt’s soulless breakfast bar, Matt, Foggy, and Karen, quiet and shaking, ever so slightly. There are dark circles behind Matt’s glasses. There's a new tattoo on Karen’s wrist that doesn't fit. It’s a revolver, short and stub and clearly designed and inked by someone who loves guns more than their clients. Oh, technically it’s a fine piece of work, Foggy would never expect her to go to anyone but the best - but the best should know what to turn down. It’s all dark ugly lines that don’t suit her bone structure, her skin, _her_ , at all. Foggy guesses there’s a lot to talk about. They don't, for a while.

Eventually Karen stops chewing, takes a sip of coffee, and says, “So, I was framed for murder.”

“The fuck?!” He turns to Matt. “Innocents and rent disputes, you told me! Not murders!”

“Karen was innocent-”

“-is innocent,” she interjects, firm.

“See? Innocent as they come. Plus someone tried to kill her in custody-”

“WHAT.”

“-so it's more like a murder, an attempted murder and a gross negligence civil suit. Kirsten’s happy. You know how suing the NYPD makes her happy.”

“We need beer for the rest of this conversation,” Foggy decides, and it is a testament to his boyfriend and absentee-now-returned friend picking skills that no one disagrees with him. At eleven in the morning.

He and Karen grab their bottles and head for the couch while Matt restocks the fridge and decides to stretch out his shoulder. Foggy's pretty sure he's not even being a shameless hussy about it, because Karen is literally a client, but her eyes bug out all the same.

“Hands where I can see em, Page,” he jokes, and she startles. Shit, probably not great in the circumstances. But she smiles, a little guilty, nonetheless. It doesn't reach her eyes.

“Sorry, just. New tattoo. Yours?”

“All of his are mine. We're working on changing that.”

“No, we're not,” Matt calls out. Freaky bat hearing.

“The hips though? How low does that one go?” She leans forward, chin cupped in her hand. Teasing, oh, _now_ he remembers the months of teasing. Is it too late to send her back to jail?

“Low enough.”

“Mmm, yeah, sure. Must've been _hard_ work.” Not for the first time, Foggy considers the possibility that women are psychic. “Oh my god, Foggy, your face.” Then again, perhaps not. “Is that really how you got together?”

“Yeah,” they say simultaneously. Then, also together: “He was oblivious. Hey!”

(It's a little bit of a routine. Sure, it happened for real once, but playacting it again is worth it for Karen’s laugh.)

“I literally tattooed instructions on my body,” Matt says as he strolls over, and this time he is showing off as he lifts his shirt a little and runs his knuckles over the word kiss. Karen averts her eyes.

“I tattooed them. You just lay there. You also let me tattoo an avocado on your arm because you chickened out of asking me out.” That had been a fun revelation, as had Matt’s quiet reflection on it, lying in the dark with his fingers in Foggy’s hair. _It gave me hope. You took a joke we'd just made and put it on me. So it was permanent. Lasting._ Foggy doesn't share that with Karen.

“Well, you're very intimidating,” Matt counters, and Karen laughs again.

He really hadn’t realised how much he missed her.

It takes a couple of days to get the gang together, but he gets her down to Clint’s and surprises her with Josie. (He watches as she looks around for Rob. Not yet, but he’s hoping. If Karen can come back- ). Katie, Carla, Ben and Jennifer are newer faces, but Karen, Carla and Ben bond over a zero-tolerance for bullshit, Jennifer challenges her to shots and loses with grace and, yeah, okay, Katie does her ‘highly suspicious of new people’ thing until half an hour before closing, when she falls into Karen’s arms almost weeping: “How is your hair so _shiny_?”

Karen wears a long-sleeved top that shows off her back, and more specifically, the tattoo on it. It’s a lovely bit of work, a watercolour willow tree, with a black silhouette of a girl behind it. A little melancholy, maybe, but the colour work is a distraction. Even Josie makes approving noises, and Jennifer has a couple of tries at guessing the artists, succeeding after two.

(“Shit, it’s Dani Moonstar, I’ve followed her work for years, I am a fool, Ben, a pitiful fool.”

“Yeah.”

“I deeply regret marrying you,” she adds, before they go back to communicating with their eyes. It might be the longest conversation Foggy’s ever heard them have.)

When Karen takes shots, her sleeve rides up and shows the other new tattoo. The bad one. The one that doesn’t fit. All of them see it, none of them mention it. They’re fucking professionals.

Matt doesn’t show up. Sure, the invitation had been casual, and it’s a very Josie’s/Nelson’s crowd, but… eh. Maybe he’d been hoping a new mutual would bring Matt more into the fold, persuade him to consider some of Foggy’s extremely talented colleagues for the sleeve they both know he’s going to end up with. It’s hard to explain, ‘cept it’s like meeting the family. And sure, Matt’s met them, but now he’s skipping Thanksgiving, if Thanksgiving was shots of dubious alcohol in a dive bar.

Wait, that totally was his last Thanksgiving.

But Matt’s working a lot of late nights now, with the firm getting on its feet, and as the weeks drag on Foggy becomes used to conducting a relationship by phone, muttering his _I love yous_ out of earshot of the other artists and getting through some long mornings with the half-forgotten sleepy memory of someone holding him in the middle of the night, even if Matt was gone when the sun came up.

It’s enough, until it isn’t.

* * *

Josie’s in the window, working on her last client of the day, a decent guy who doesn’t mind being free advertising as the street lights flicker on and cast him in six different shades of orange, when the bomb goes off. Bombs, plural, actually, but for them there’s one that matters, on the corner of the block opposite. It sends the glass of their front window, the huge pane of it, tinkling inwards in a thousand sharp pieces. The client screams and covers his face with his hands - Josie was already bent over his chest, so he’s pretty well covered.

It’s Josie that was in the worst of it, and as the client swings out of the chair and hightails it to the back of the store, she just slithers to the floor. Foggy catches her under her arms before her head hits the ground, and it’s frightening how light she is in his arms. She’s Josie, made of steel and granite, but he can lift her out of the heap of broken glass as easy as anything.

Ben gets a chair from the back as she starts swatting at Foggy to put her down _right this motherfucking instant you limpdick bast-_ and Carla’s already giving the address to 911. Sirens are going off all over the city, but Foggy’s only got eyes and ears for Josie, where she’s still cussing him out as blood runs down her arm, her back, from her scalp into her eyes.

“Shit,” she says suddenly, half an octave higher. “Rob, where’s Rob-”

“He’s not here, he’s not in New York, he’ll be fine, _you’ll_ be fine, stop moving, Josie, _please_ -” he can’t get his professionally-honed calm into his voice, but there are tears in Carla’s eyes and Ben is standing in the doorway, staring at the sky.

Staring at the sky. They all follow his gaze and thank god, thank god, it’s clear. It’s not the Incident again, it’s maybe something else, it’s definitely something else, but there’s no fucking Chitauri- Except maybe it’s something new, something _else_ , and a new fear grips his heart, and Josie’s still asking about Rob, Rob who left years ago, and her white T-shirt is red now, and finally Ben runs outside to flag down an ambulance, half a dozen ambulances, all screeching to a halt outside.

A pair of paramedics run in and start checking Josie over and hustling her out the door at the same time. “Sir,” one of them says to Foggy, when he lingers in the shop, trying to breath, “Sir, you have to leave. Everyone has to leave, we don’t know the area’s safe. Could be a gas leak.”

Gas leak doesn’t sound right. Maybe he’s paranoid, maybe he’s lucky, but there’s an inkling deep in his bones that this is more than an accident. It’ll be a few minutes before the reports come flooding in, bombs all over the borough, the news beamed down to Foggy’s phone between calls to Matt, Karen, Matt, his mom, _Matt_ , why isn’t he picking up, what’s _happened_.

Foggy hustles down the street as the ambulances pull away, and it’s not until he reaches the corner where cops are hastily putting up a cordon that he turns back to survey the damage. The explosion has ripped through a derelict couple of stores and an apartment building that definitely had families in it, and a dog that barked through the night. There’s glass and rubble all over the street and distantly, screaming. A thick black lick of smoke snakes across the road and up, as do two more in the distance.

He gets Matt’s voicemail again. “Matt, please, call me, let me know you’re okay. I’m going to hospital, I’m fine, but Josie’s- call me, please-”

“Sir-”

“It’s Foggy, by the way, if you couldn’t- please call-”

“Sir, please, could you come this way, there’s a medic-”

“I don’t need a-”

“Foggy.” It’s Ben, calm and clear. “Foggy, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s Josie’s,” he starts to say, but no, there’s a piercing pain in his side that isn’t the panicked tightness of his lungs but much more like, well, being pierced with a shard of glass. “Oh. Yeah.” He hangs up the call, lets himself be led through a crowd of gawkers gaping at the smoke, who part before him like the sea.

At the hospital he’s triaged as low-priority penetration wound, which for all it sounds _hilarious_ is fairly agonising now he can see the bleeding. Some painkillers dull that, before a nurse informs him that he’s lucky his ribs were in the way of the short, wide triangle of glass she removes from his chest. He needs a number of stitches that is higher than zero, which sucks, especially since the glass slipped through his chest tattoo, bright red gleaming against yellow, and just looking at it it’s obvious that it won’t heal straight. Nothing ever does.

More people keep coming in through the doors, looking like him or worse, hair and faces clogged with pale dust except for where the red leaks through. He gets shunted upstairs to a private room that’s probably going to mean a long argument with his insurance company at some point, and has to rely on what he can hear people say in passing for news. It’s not just one explosion, that much is obvious, but it’s not the Incident again. He already feels sick, pain and shock roiling in his stomach, but the word bomb makes it so much worse.

Ben hovers near his bed until Jen arrives, then hotfoots it to Josie, on the other side of the hospital. They text each other updates, which is great and all, Foggy’s glad to know how Josie’s doing, but he’s pretty sure the moment he vomits from the pain and shock into one of those convenient cardboard kidney dishes also makes it into the messaging, which… woo. Dignity. He had it once, he swears.

Mostly, though, she uses her phone to call Matt’s voicemail. The office voicemail, his mobile voicemail, anything. Foggy’s phone is charging on the side table, so it’s clear if Matt tries to call back. He tells his _mom_ to call him back the next day, to keep the line clear, even though the sound of her voice is the first thing to soothe him since he caught Josie in his arms. While the painkillers are keeping a lid on his panic physically, keeping his pulse regular, his breathing even, Foggy’s still half-mad with it. He tries to stay sane about it - a call every 20 minutes, that’s normal, that’s _fine_ , but eventually even silent Jen starts using her words to tell him to sleep instead.

“I should really go out and find him,” he suggests instead. “I mean, it’d also save on hospital costs, so, win-”

“Yeah, until you rip your guts open again clambering out of bed-”

“Okay, we need to work on your understanding of anatomy-”

“Stay in bed, boss. I’m sure your boyfriend was fine. No bombs went off near his office or his apartment, and c’mon, you’re attached at the hip, where else would he be without you?” She doesn’t quite say _he’s blind_ and Foggy doesn’t launch into his staunch defence of Matt being perfectly capable of just about anything, thanks, because right now? Right now he kinda hopes he’s not, that he’s at home with a dead phone and not out there, in a city that sounds like a warzone.

Instead, he tries to push his mind elsewhere. “Bombs? So it was definitely bombs?” His stomach turns again, twists. Bombs aren’t an alien invasion. Bombs aren’t gods from different planets. They’re made by humans. Someone ripped his neighbourhood apart, and he can’t even say Captain America will stop them. That good will triumph over evil.

She hums an affirmative, having apparently used her lot of words for the evening, and switches on the TV.

It’s the only thing on the news, obviously. Foggy watches, rapt. Twenty minutes in Ben shows up to take Jen home and he waves them off without a word, eyes fixed.

By the time a nurse comes round to make him sleep, there’s a death toll hovering on the edge of the screen. She goes to turn it off, but he stops her.

“No,” he says, firmly. “I wanna watch.”

She sighs. “Don’t blame me for the nightmares then.” As if he has any intention of sleeping.

It takes a certain mood to find rolling news interesting for any length of time. When there’s breaking news, it’s worse, less slick, the same four or five facts repeated in endless permutations between speculation and hearsay. It’s impossible to endure, rationally. But Foggy has blood on his side, in his teeth, adrenaline under his tongue and morphine dulling his senses. He’s freaked, emotional, desperate for a reason, for rationality. And it’s something to do beyond checking his phone.

He can’t hold out against sleep, or at least rest, forever, but the burble and the faint edge of pain returning keeps him near the edge of consciousness until the shootout begins. Minutes later, three cops are dead, Foggy’s white-knuckled, and the man in the mask is top of his shit list. Well, right after the boyfriend who hasn’t called him back yet. Really, at this point, Matt better be buried under ten feet of rubble, because Foggy’s pissed.

But no. Come morning, a few hours of fitful and, yeah, nightmare-laden sleep, morphine’s a dick, Foggy drifts back again to make out Matt’s profile, half visible through in the doorway. He’s standing with his back to the room, leaning against the wall on the far side of the doorway, like he’s standing guard. And he’s there, sure, but he’s not there enough.

It takes Foggy a couple of tries to get actual human words out, but he manages to wheeze “you’re okay” past his dry throat. It sounds a little reproachful even to his own ears. He tries not to do the whole passive-aggressive thing, even if it’s kind of a natural tendency, but stitches get him a pass, right?

Matt doesn’t startle, but he does hang his head for a moment before coming inside. “I’m okay.” He stops, plants his feet a little, like he’s squaring up for something. A reproach, maybe.

Well, Foggy’s got one of those lined up. “Where were you? I was hurt, Matt. I _am_ hurt.”

Matt swallows, and for a moment there’s no trace of the cocky asshole Foggy’s known for years. “I'm sorry, Fog. I- I was out on the street when one of the bombs went off, dropped my phone in the crush to get away. I didn’t know you were here until this morning, I swear, if I’d known, I would have…” He trails off, fingers flexing round his cane, before he takes off his glasses and runs his hands through his hair. There’s dust in it, a fresh graze on his knuckles, a cut on his chin, and Foggy feels a pinch of anger at the back of his neck at the assholes who must have barged past a blind man at the sight of danger, without stopping to help.

“Okay,” Foggy says, tentative. He knows this is his to forgive, and part of him doesn’t want to, feels the sting, but there are three dead cops and a terrorist blowing his city apart and what’s that to a boyfriend who loses his phone at the worst possible time? “It’s not your fault,” he decides, and that feels good, the way something visibly lifts from Matt’s shoulders, reminds him of the skinny kid in a Columbia hoodie whose smile lit up a shop. Still: “I just… I really needed you, man.”

Matt is suddenly close, crowds closer, and Foggy does feel precious now, cradled and cared for, so it’s harder to hold on to that nugget of wrong, of having been wronged. “I know, Foggy, I am so, so sorry.” His kiss feels like he means it.

“Yeah,” Foggy breathes. “Yeah, okay, me too-” even though he's not, he's not sorry, he was worried sick, like, literally, but he's a peacemaker, and Matt's face makes him a little stupid. “We should maybe talk, um, later.”

“Mhm,” Matt maybe agrees, kissing him again, and Foggy upgrades a little stupid to a lot. “Later.”

They don't talk about it. There's Josie to worry about, when she's kept in an extra day for observation in case of infection, and she’d probably kill him for thinking it, but she looks frail. There's his own antibiotics to take, a totalitarian regime of eating at set hours and not even a single beer to take the edge off being impaled. There's the shop, and the street, and way too many insurance companies to deal with for the damage to numerous Nelsons (God, naming it after himself had seemed like such a good idea before the paperwork).

Somewhere he decides he doesn't need another difficult conversation. Besides, Matt’s gloriously attentive in the days after the bombings. Nelson’s is closed for two days, while they clean up the glass and board up the windows, and Foggy feels delightfully lazy on doctor-ordered bed rest.

Matt brings round dinner and smiles as he twirls chopsticks round his fingers. He lets Foggy eat in bed, which normally offends his delicate sensibilities; not once does he grumble about sleeping in a bed that smells of sesame, although that may be because he stays up working in Foggy’s kitchen until long after Foggy’s drifted off. He kisses twice as sweetly in the mornings when Foggy wakes and Matt’s already shrugging on his suit jacket.

“But it’s Saturday,” Foggy whines against his mouth one day, about a week after- after. “I thought we had a deal, Murdock, shirtlessness and ogling.” It’s his last day off before going back to work and he's been looking forward to it. There's been a distinct lack of Shirtless Saturdays over the past couple of months, it's bad, he'll develop a deficiency. (There's a vitamin D joke in there somewhere, even if the hole in his side thing has made sex a little ambitious of late.)

“Sorry, it’s a-”

“Big case,” Foggy chimes in, only feigning annoyance.

“And Kirsten will-”

“Flay you alive if it fails. Mmm, okay, I release you from my presence. But you gotta get shirtless soon, Matt, I’m starting to forget what your abs look like.”

“And that matters to you?” Matt teases.

“Yes! Your abs and I have a long and beautiful friendship, and it’s cruel of you to stand in the way of it.” Matt chuckles as he heads for the hall. “And we’ll never get your chest piece sorted if you don't let me see your chest!” he calls after him, and the belly laugh he gets to hear before the front door closes is enough to make him feel pleased, in a delightfully sappy way.

Matt doesn't come back that night, but he calls, and that's something. He's been better at that, at calling, and it's a little weird that it takes him being better for Foggy to realise he'd gotten so bad. He thinks about it, a little, as he potters gently around his empty apartment, but then he spots Matt’s toothbrush in the bathroom, his spare braille reader on the coffee table, and it doesn’t so much matter that Matt’s not here right _now_ , because he’s here really. When it matters.

Carla gives him a hug when he gets in the next morning, then peers past him at the door. “Your boyfriend not walk you in?” she asks, an edge of something in her voice - not quite disapproval, but not pure curiosity either. The Italian nonna in her, craning her neck for a better view. Foggy scoffs.

“Uh, no? I’m not an invalid, Carla, I can walk places.”

“Sure, sure, just - he used to, didn’t he? Or walk you home?”

Foggy rolls his eyes. “He's busy, it's Sunday. Church.” That sounds right, kinda, even if he actually doesn't know, not really. But it's Matt, church is a thing. A likely thing.

He shakes himself off, tells himself not to be so codependent. Matt’s been perfect, caring, it’s natural he needs some time to get back to everything else in his life - work, his cases, and something about Wilson Fisk’s whole ‘saving Hell’s Kitchen’ deal that Karen keeps getting halfway through explaining before cutting herself off.

(Foggy knows he probably should care more, his shop isn’t going to survive a truly committed attempt at gentrification, but there’s a man in a mask going around _bombing_ his neighbourhood, so it kinda seems like there are bigger problems?)

Marissa finally comes back, more colour in her face and a fistful of twisted bills in her hand. She still wants her devil, not a line different from the sketch he gave her at the start of the year, and Foggy’s all too happy to paint it on her skin.

It’s four hours in the chair, babbling about nothing, until relaxed enough to start telling him about the dance class she’s started teaching in her old highschool gym. Her tattoo is going to look hella good peeking out from shorts, she assures him, a flash of a grin brightening her eyes.

He tells Matt about it over text that night - not the details, not his suspicions, but how it feels to have a client he can really help. How it feels to do good by doing what he loves.

Matt doesn’t reply.

He finds out why the next morning. He doesn’t take phone calls when he’s with clients (super bad etiquette) but Karen catches him on a coffee break.

“Foggy, oh my god, I just heard, is Matt okay?”

“What?”

“The car acciden-”

He hangs up before she gets to the final consonant and is calling Matt as fast as his fingers allow.

“Foggy.” There’s a rasp to his voice that kicks Foggy’s heart up a notch.

“I’m coming over,” he decides.

“Don’t-” Matt starts to say, but Foggy’s already leaving the shop. He wonders if Matt can tell, because there’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “Okay. It's not that bad. I’m going to hang up and get ready.”

“Please don’t on my account,” Foggy says, his feet not fast enough to match his pulse as he pounds the pavement. “I love you.” But Matt’s put the phone down too soon.

There’s a nurse leaving Matt’s building as he hops up the steps, so he jogs in without needing to buzz. Matt’s slow to answer the door and for a moment he wonders if Matt’s lied to him, if he’s hurt much worse than he said, _why didn’t he call_ , but then he ‘s looking at Matt’s bruised but smiling face. Matt’s moving stiffly, sure, like he does after a difficult case - and they’ve all been difficult cases lately - but he’s got, like, all his limbs.

“Hey, it’s me. You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

Foggy gets a quick kiss before Matt’s heading back to the bedroom with a bleary explanation of _painkillers_. Foggy moves to follow, but Matt waves him back, and Foggy’s all for appeasing the invalid, so he stays where he is. Everything feels a bit disjointed, niggling at him. Why hadn’t Matt called him to the hospital? They’ve talked about this. Obviously it’s a shitty moment to bring that up, but… they’ve talked about this.

He sits on the couch and at last figures out one of the things that’s off. The rug in the corner, that normally distracts him by being the single aesthetic mismatch in Matt’s sleek apartment, is gone. The sofa feels different too, lumpy. The material is stiffer, hard with- well, he assumes dirt, but when he drags a nail down the cushion, it flakes away reddish brown.

“Jesus, Matt, you bled all over the couch? You suing the guy that hit you?”

Mat makes an indistinct noise from the bedroom that could be ‘popped a stitch’ or ‘dropped a bitch’ or whatever. Foggy, because he’s a kindly soul, decides to flip the couch cushion for him. He can barely see the stain against the fabric, but it’s the principle of not sitting in a dried pool of his boyfriend’s blood. Some black material drops out from underneath as he does so, which explains the lumps.

Foggy picks it up, expecting a pair of Matt’s boxers, or a t-shirt - guy wears a lot of black, to be honest, and Foggy makes him take a lot of it off for fun sexytimes (except that one time with the suit, but the dry cleaning bill kinda dampened his kink) - anyway, clothes. He expects clothes.

It’s not that. He’s trying to figure it out when he puts his fist in the bowl of it, lets the rest hang. And then, of course, it’s obvious, hits him between the eyes just as Matt limps back to his bedroom door.

“Would you look at that,” he says, quiet. Matt smiles just as softly.

“I can’t.”

“Really?” Foggy asks, sharply, and since the floor is sliding beneath his feet, since everything is out of whack, it’s sort of cruelly satisfying to see Matt pulled off balance too.

Not Matt. The man in the mask. Who is Matt, who must, of course, be Matt.

“What do you-” Matt’s asking, too careful, too practised to be the first time he’s lied to Foggy, lied to his face. Foggy doesn’t let him finish.

“No, you know what, I’m gonna believe the blind thing. Because your Dread Pirate Roberts costume is pretty much on the money but you forgot to cut fucking eyeholes!” He throws the mask at him, and he’s not even surprised when Matt snatches it out of the air as he charges forward, gets a hand on Foggy’s shoulder to keep him seated before he can think to get away.

His boyfriend blows things up. Maybe blows up people. He should really _get away_.

Ex-boyfriend, he means. Obviously.

Shit, but Matt’s strong.

“Foggy, _Foggy_ , I can explain-”

* * *

He never thought he’d get sick of hearing Matt talk. But a few sentences into ‘a world on fire’ and he is so immeasurably tired of listening. Thing is, he can tell Matt’s practised this little speech, and it raises questions he’s itching to ask: was it for him? Or for whoever did his stitches? Or for no one at all, a mock defence for a trial he’s never gonna have, cause it’ll be death, not the law, that catches up with him first.

He believes some things - the senses. The heartbeats. The bombs - he has to believe the bombs weren’t Matt, can’t bear to think anything else, even if later he’ll catch himself, rub the thin raised scar in his side, and wonder if he was too quick to accept, too desperate to hope for the best.

The kung-fu master chosen by nuns to train an orphan plays a little less well.

And, of course, _I wanted to tell you_. He doesn’t believe that one for a second.

God, he knew they had communication issues - Matt’s tattoos are testament to that, literally Old Testament, in one notable case that Foggy will call exhibit A in the anatomy of their breakup - but he never realised it was like this.

Eventually, it’s too much. “Okay, no, I’m done. This is done, this is- stop _explaining._ I don’t need to know any of this. I’m out of here. Don’t call me.”

“Foggy, you can’t- we’re not-”

“I’m sorry, you thought the bombshell of this conversation was I’m leaving you? That’s literally the only part of today that makes sense to me. God!”

It ends with a bang and a whimper: Foggy slams the door behind him and pretends he can’t hear Matt crying as he staggers down the hallway. Pretends Matt can’t hear him too, all the way down the street. All the way to Clint’s, and a booth, and his head face down in something bitter and sticky.

When he wakes up, it’s Valentine’s Day, and damn if that isn’t a reason to keep drinking.

Karen blows up his phone for a day but by the time he’s sober enough to call back, she’s sending him to voicemail. It stings.

Without talking about it - they don't talk, period, he doesn't see Matt, and only wants to like 80 per cent of the time - they divide up what they shared.

Foggy gets Clint’s bar, which seems only fair, since it was his first. (So, he wants to argue, was Karen, but then he supposes Matt literally saved her life, even if she doesn’t know it. God. He stops trying to call her.)

Josie forces Clint to cut him off from the eel for good and he goes through a rough period of slamming beers and scamming pool. He’s not actually good enough at pool to succeed all that often, which keeps him out of most fights, but he tries.

(And yeah, he sees the irony in picking fights with decent, if punchy, _ow_ , dudes when he’s judging Matt for beating felons. Torturing himself with the hypocrisy of it the next morning is half the fun. He suspects the Catholicism rubbed off on him as much as the Catholic did. Hah.)

He gets the Mayflower, and silently appreciates the way they give him only one set of chopsticks as soon as he starts ordering alone, even if he's getting pretty much the same amount of food.

Matt gets the night. Foggy gives him that. As soon as the shop closes he heads for home, or the bar, or, more rarely, out of the Kitchen entirely. He doesn't walk further than to the nearest subway station, doesn't hit up the fish market or stagger home at three am. He keeps the shadows of Hell’s Kitchen out of sight, and hopes to keep what they hide out of mind.

It’s a cliche so trite he must have inked it a thousand times, but _life goes on_. Josie picks his ass up when he falls and Kate sets up a vengeance dartboard with Matt’s business card on it, because Foggy refuses to let a photo on the premises. The shop crew seem to have assumed cheating as a root cause, because they spit poison for a week until he begs them to stop.

(“He didn’t do… _that.”_

“He did something.” Ben, indignant.

He’s not wrong.)

He gets a _Daily Bulletin_ every day, but one morning he gets to work to find one already on his workstation. Daredevil’s on the front page, and his first thought is Matt before he remembers: Matt’s blind.

(Matt’s blind, he tells himself. That part was true. Almost definitely true. Matt’s blind. He can hold on to that.)

It's about Fisk, and a fight, and the held breath that every person in Hell’s Kitchen let out as one after weeks (Since the Russians. Since the bombs.) He gets what he's supposed to feel. Pride. Guilt. Admiration. Mostly, though, he's just sad, and bitterly amused. The costume looks so damn stupid.

The first break through the clouds comes literally and metaphorically on the same day, and improves life, like, a lot. The April rain stops and Rob, blessed Rob, walks in through the door.

“You cut your hair,” he says, and Foggy shakes his shortened mane, feels the edges brush his jaw. “That bad a break up, huh?” He leans in, squints a bit, rubs his shoulder. “You already booked in with Josie for a Fuck it, I’m over you tattoo, or am I going to talk some sense into you?”

Foggy rolls up his jeans to show the stick and poke Kate did in her bathroom - an arrow in chunky black ink.

“At least you left out the heart,” Rob sighs.

He notes the day he’s been not-with Matt for longer than they were ever together with no particular ceremony, but he notes it nonetheless.

* * *

Rob’s return finally settles the part of Nelson’s that felt like a dream, too good to be true. Not just because Josie swings by more now that it’s not just “godawful young people everywhere” or because Kate has someone finally worth all her hero-worship to look up to, but because he brings in a crowd of his old regulars that keeps them busy. A lot of vets, old Army buddies and those who have put the word around. Foggy joins him for a pair of matching tattoos on a guy who has just come back from deployment and his wife, the first morning they’re together again, and the smiles they keep sharing between the chairs help lift a little of the bitterness in Foggy’s heart.

Between the bump and the new regulars like the Castles, soon Nelsons’ is pulling in enough work that the crew can take the odd morning off without fear of foreclosure.

And a morning off means a great night out.

One such evening they've hit Clint’s a little too soon, taking up too much space and making too much noise. Someone grumbles at the bar and Josie threatens them with a Skwad tattoo, which has all of them on the floor laughing.

And, naturally enough, the conversation turns to superheroes. Foggy orders two more beers and decides to sit that one out.

“I’m just saying, Jessica Jones is more of a superhero than the Hulk. She hasn’t even destroyed the city once, big and green managed it twice.” Kate, two vodka tonics in.

“She snapped a guy’s neck.” Carla.

“Like Tony Stark hasn’t.”

“Sure. For world peace. Arresting Jones was _crazy_ , but she’s not _saving the world_.”

“What, like Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? _Please_. The Avengers abandoned New York. Who just leaves after something like that?” Kate asks. There’s a beat of awkward silence before Rob leans forward and says, as kindly as he can:

“Plenty of people, hun.”

Kate’s got the decency to look shamefaced, but she’s not giving up her argument. “All I’m saying is, New York deserves heroes, and if that’s Jessica Jones or the Devil, fine.” Foggy starts shredding the label on his first beer into tiny pieces. Clint’ll bitch at him about it, but to hell with him.

“The Devil? You mean Daredevil now, kid. He rebranded.”

“Hey, it worked.” Josie. “The costume definitely added to the superhero look. That ass-”

“The Avengers _saved_ New York too,” Foggy interjects. He realises too late that it doesn’t match up, the conversation has moved on, but fuck’s sake. Goddamn his resolutions. “From aliens and gods who also turned out to be aliens. Not petty crime.” A little too loud, too scornful; too _involved_.

“It’s not all petty. Fisk wasn’t petty.”

“Still, it’s crime, not super-villains.”

“True. After all, we can always rely on the NYPD for justice,” Ben says, with such a straight face that it takes Jen squealing to clue them in on the joke.

“Maybe it’s not so clear cut as crime and villainy,” Kate mutters into her beer, but the subject is dropped.

Until, that is, six or seven drinks later, when Kate’s been poured into a cab and Foggy, Ben and Jen are swaying gently in the night air. He’s trying hard not to look at the shadows, to remember he gave Matt the night. A cab home is ruinous, but he also just spent $80 on drinks at the cheapest bar he knows, so what the hell.

Jen’s fingers shake on her cigarette as she steps closer. “I met one once, you know,” she says, like they haven’t been standing in silence for a couple of minutes.

“One what?”

“A supervillain. Or- a mutant maybe? A gifted person? Someone with powers, only mean. Cruel. Evil, I think.” Ben comes up, stands behind her shoulder, and she leans back against him but doesn’t stop talking. “He came into our old shop, with a girl. Made me ink her. She- she said she wanted it, but maybe he made her say that.” She laughs, cracked.

Matt, don’t be listening, he prays. He’s not even sure he should be hearing this, but Ben is gazing at him steadily and makes no move to stop Jen from telling her story.

“He wanted his hand on her. Across her spine, in the small of her back. Only, they were- he was- running from something. We were low on time. So I just got the fingertips done. His fingertips on her.” Her eyes shine, bloodshot and full. “I keep telling Ben if she comes back, if she ever comes back, I’ll cover them. Change them. I’ve got the designs. I’d pay her to get the chance. I say it all the time, don’t I?”

“You do,” her husband rumbles, and wraps an arm around her waist.

“But, you see, I didn’t stay at that shop. Couldn’t. So how’s she going to find me?” She blinks, and the tears in her eyes race each other to her chin, but she’s not really crying. Jen would never cry in front of him.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Foggy says, fast as he can. “He made you. You didn’t do _anything_ wrong.”

She smiles, a bit lopsided, at him, totters up and slaps a quick messy kiss on his cheek. “You’re good people. S’why we stay, ‘cause you’re good. But there are bad. And they’re worse than all the bad heroes, and Joneses, and Devils.”

“Okay, home time for you,” Ben murmurs against her hair as he hails a cab. They stagger over together and Foggy lifts a hand in farewell, stunned silent by the odd, moving seconds that stretch out into the past like hours.

“It’s okay to be scared! It’s scary!” Jen yells from the cab, before Ben swings in behind her.

Foggy walks his thoughts home.

Superheroes come up again, on other nights and in other bars - Katie's got a bee in her bonnet about Hawkeye’s ‘retirement’, and they chalk it up to losing a valuable customer - but that's the last time Foggy has to talk about Daredevil for a little while.

Until the day Kirsten calls him. She’s going a mile a minute the second he picks up. “Hey, so you’re not actually on my Help me move a body list, but I need you to. Help me move a body. An alive body. Probably should have led with that. It’s Matt, obviously.”

He seriously contemplates putting down the phone and walking away. Like all the way to California away.

Instead: “Yeah. I gathered. Still not sure why I’m-”

“He’s in costume. I’ve asked Claire but she won’t get off shift for an hour and I can’t carry him back to his apartment alone. I’ve got shady lawyer friends, but they’re not that shady. Foggy, please.”

He’s free. God help him, it’s technically his day off and he can do inventory some other time. Christ, his life.

“Where are you?”

Lugging anyone, let alone _Daredevil_ , unseen through the Kitchen is not a bucket-list worthy event. It’s hard. Matt’s so dead to the world Foggy has to keep one eye on the pulse in his neck to make sure he doesn’t go all literal. They get Foggy’s hoodie on him, to hide the worst of the shiny red leather armour, but the pants are still pretty distinctive. “If anyone asks, it’s a kink thing,” Kirsten tells him, which isn’t the worst excuse, even if it makes his guts twist green with something like retroactive jealousy. Luckily they don’t have to use it.

Matt’s couch looks like it’s more blood than fabric, and the wound on his head doesn’t improve matters.

“Thanks, I owe you one,” Kirsten says. Uh, yeah. Foggy’s not sure how to dignify that one with an answer.

“Sure,” he offers eventually. “Tell Karen I said hi.”

She shakes her head, still looking at Matt. Not him. “I can't. I already lied to close the office today, saying I saw you throws up too many questions. I'm sorry,” she adds, and she sounds it, so Foggy can't even be mad.

Instead, he's just a little sadder. “I’m going to go now. If anyone asks, I wasn’t involved.”

“He’ll know you were here. From the smell.”

“I know,” he says, but she ignores him.

“He does that all the time, street corners, bars, anywhere near 40th, it’s like he’s a sad puppy.” An accurate description of Matt Murdock, before all the Double-D bullshit. Kirsten’s giving him a significant look. He can tell it’s significant, cause it’s the first time she’s looked at him rather than Matt the whole damn morning.

His shop is on 40th.

“Are you trying to tell me something without telling me something? Because I don’t speak lawyer.”

“He misses you.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“Have you?”

“It’s been seven months.” Too precise, he realises, too late. She smiles, small and lopsided.

“I thought you didn’t speak lawyer.”

“You sent me the Bulletin. About Fisk.”

“Well, he wasn’t going to.” She folds her arms. “You knew before I did, if it helps. But I think it was less of a surprise for me.”

What can he say to that?

There’s a knock on the door and Kirsten lets in another piercingly beautiful woman. It’s really becoming an uncomfortable pattern. “Claire, thank god, I think he’s been shot in the helmet.” Helmet, sure, that’s a comforting way to say head. Whatever floats her boat.

Foggy slips out as they move towards Matt, but he hears their last exchange as he books it.

(“Who was that?” “ _That_ was Foggy Nelson.”)

Claire’s long “oh” follows him down the hallway.

* * *

He wants to say nothing changes after the day he carries his unconscious ex-boyfriend through the streets of New York with said ex-boyfriend’s new… whatever… to conceal his illegal vigilantism but that is _patently untrue_.

Besides, he’s stopped sleeping. Not entirely, but it’s a few days later, 2am blinking on the clock, and he’s rubbing his fingers together, remembering how tacky and thick Matt’s blood felt after they took off the helmet.

He sticks a radio play on his laptop and tries to sketch. It’s Hitchhikers Guide, one of a dozen plays and audiobooks he bought when Matt was still around, to break up Foggy’s musical movie marathons. Somehow, in the dark, with thoughts chasing themselves around his head, it loses the funny a bit. The absurdity becomes horrifying, and all his doodles have black, yawning mouths and teeth.

Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, maybe it’s the lull of British voices wittering, but it takes him a while to notice the sudden, rhythmic clunking for what it is.

There’s a strange knocking sound from his bathroom. Logically, he knows that it is not a tub monster, that tub monsters are not real, that Candace is mean and still owes him _months of therapy_ for inventing the tub monster, but still. He feels totally justified in reaching one arm in to turn the light on before he pokes his head round the door.

It’s not a tub monster. It’s a devil at the window. He’s not sure why he didn’t think of that.

He closes the toilet seat, slides up the sash and sits down for the _super fun_ conversation to come.

“I brought back your hoodie.”

“At night. In the dark. Through a window. Good call.”

“I got the blood out of it.”

“Double bonus.”

It’s a long silence. Back in Foggy’s bedroom his laptop bleats: _“We have normality, I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t handle is therefore your own problem,”_ and he’s not sure whether to laugh or cry.

“I fought one of your old customers last night,” Matt offers, like that could possibly be the right thing to say.

“Fought? Or beat up?”

“Fought.”

“Oh, well, that’s just fine then. I take it this was a Devil thing, not an ex thing? Or should I be waiting at the courthouse with a baseball bat for your clients?”

“He isn’t a good guy, Foggy. I just- wanted you to know that. If it got back to you.”

He sighs. “I was never under the impression they were all good guys.” Matt inhales and he holds up a hand to stop him. A second later he feels the old guilt from early on in their friendship, when he’d forget to narrate gestures, and a second _after that_ he realises Matt has stopped. That Matt could sense it anyway. Always could. It’s like being hit by a wave off the North Atlantic. “I don’t need to know the details, although, if you were trying for talking me round, I wouldn’t have led with beatings.”

“Talk you round?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quickly. His fingers splay over his own knees. He didn’t. He _doesn’t._ “Others have tried, and it hasn't gone well. Katie’s a big fan though. Of DD, I mean. Not so much you.” Her aim on the vengeance dartboard is unerring.

Matt’s smirk is a slice of red and white in the dark. Carmine and ivory, tending towards cornsilk, really, but that’d be overthinking it and he doesn’t do that. Not now. “Didn’t she used to prefer an Avenger?”

“Hawkguy.”

“It’s Hawkeye, Foggy,” he says, like being a superhero - vigilante, damn it - makes him the expert.

“That’s not the fight we’re having right now, Matt.”

“Were we fighting?” he asks, tilts his head, and even with the horns and no glorious bed head carved by the angels themselves, it’s achingly familiar as a gesture. Foggy has to think about it.

“We weren’t. We weren’t doing anything. And we can get right back to that if you give me back my hoodie.”

Matt thrusts it through the window, maybe a centimetre off in aim. Foggy takes it, one hand below, one above, and when his fingers brush against the back of Matt’s hand - glove - the other one lands on top, like a bizarre hand-hoodie sandwich. Matt’s got a grip on him, that’s for sure.

“I didn’t say thank you,” Matt says, voice suddenly hoarse. “For helping me.”

Foggy stands. His right knee clicks. Matt’s hands drop away and Foggy has to fight not to hug the sweatshirt to his chest.

“That’s right,” he says. “You didn’t.” The bathroom door closes, whisper silent, behind him, and he stands next to it listening for five, maybe ten minutes but he still doesn’t hear when Matt leaves.

Fucking _ninjas_.

Well, he really can’t sleep after that. He potters around the apartment, all two rooms of it, for fifteen minutes, while Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect keep bickering on his laptop. Eventually he starts flicking through old sketchbooks for something, anything to take his mind off it.

It’s half three when Marissa’s good devil smiles up at him, strong-jawed and heroic. The page opposite is blank and almost reluctantly he reaches for his pens and starts working up a page. Two interlocking Ds. A red silhouette over New York. Horns in a lifeline.

When he needs to rest his wrist he digs out that old _Bulletin_ , hidden not-quite-carelessly between his comics and his old yearbook, reads through the story slowly. Looking online, there’s a whole Daredevil tag on the Bulletin website - possible sightings, plenty of op-eds, interviews with people who’ve encountered him. The city can’t stop talking about Daredevil, apparently. And Foggy can’t stop drawing him.

The sun comes up and Foggy’s still got no idea what he’s trying to do. It keeps coming up again and again in the days that follow, and he fills a sketchbook, and yet. No clues.

* * *

He celebrates his birthday at Nelson’s. They finish up for the day and head to the back with a couple of crates of beer: Foggy, Carla, Katie, Rob, Ben and Jennifer. Ben and Jennifer stick to non-alcoholics, and nobody says anything, and they still don’t seem to talk to each other but - well, there’s a distinct glow. It spreads, warm, as Josie lets herself in. She and Rob start trading stories about the good old days - mostly Foggy’s most humiliating moments, with one large, Matt-shaped omission.

Candace joins them at about nine, bitching about the train from Jersey even as she covers Foggy’s head with kisses. As ever, they try to get her in the chair and she screeches. (“I’m getting married, you freaks, I need Donny’s family to think I’m classy until the ring is on my finger!”)

It’s late when there’s a knock at the front. Rob goes to answer it and comes back with Karen tucked under his arm. She’s holding the largest, shiniest balloon Foggy’s seen since he was five years old. It looks a little like his heart feels.

(Okay, so there might also have been some _substances_.)

“Hey,” she says.

He pulls her closer than he means to, hugs her tighter, and in a way it’s like she’s come back all over again, even if this time she was never more than five blocks away.

“I- I wanted to say,” she starts, but he shushes her.

“Probably not the time, I’ve had, like,” he finger counts, one, two, five “many beers. Which you should, also, where are the beers?” Katie slings him one, and he passes it off to Karen. “Drink up, Kare-bear.”

“Okay, Foggy-bear,” and that nickname never made any sense, but goddamn, is it good to hear again.

They run out of beer before they run out of conversation, and Josie somehow magics up whisky - Foggy strongly suspects and, being wasted, loudly voices his suspicions, that she has had it hidden in his premises from the very beginning. Josie says nothing, but Rob high fives her. Whisky is Foggy’s delicious, cosy kryptonite.

Three glasses in Candace leaves to get the last express and Bennifer head home. Rob starts sketching a new tattoo for Katie, and Karen’s the only one who puts effort into arguing they shouldn’t do it right there and then. (She wins. She’s scary now.)

Clint swings by after closing to pick up Josie, and it’s probably a sign that his favourite dive bar has closed for the night before he’s finished celebrating, but good or bad, nobody will say.

He announces, grandly, that he is thirty years young and will prove it by sleeping on the tattoo bench, like that makes any sense. “Like a christening,” he says, and Katie snorts and everyone studiously avoids pointing out how he _actually_ christened Nelson’s (oh, oh, now the boasting comes back to bite him on the- okay, well, maybe biting was the wrong metaphor, _oral fixation much_.)

Eventually, though, with hugs and laughter and love, so much love - you’re a good kid, I love you, man, I swear, I would literally shoot your enemies, like, in the face - they leave him. He settles in amongst the empties and snoozes, happiness and drunkenness a gentle fog - hah - around him.

The ceiling keeps staring at him. Not cool, ceiling. There’s a history - and just like that, he can’t possibly sleep, not in this studio, not with Matt fucking Murdock lurking in its shadows like - well, like Matt fucking Murdock is probably doing in some other fucking shadow at that very fucking moment.

Fuck, essentially. This is why whisky is not his friend.

He starts cleaning, angrily, because he’s seen Carla keep her shit together with just a dustpan and brush to fight off the world. He gathers up the empties and takes them out to the trash.

The alley out back is _cold_ and pitch black, and the clinking of the glasses in the hefty bag goes from everyday to sinister like that. The feeling of being watched pierces his fuzzy drunken comfort, a sharp injection of sobriety.

The large crash of a body hitting the trash cans at the end of the alley has a similar effect.

“Are you okay?” he asks, before he even has time to think.

There’s a familiar guilty silence. Then:

“Yes.” Matt. Naturally.

Foggy’s not sure if he was hoping for Matt or not. Captain America would have been nice. But Captain America probably has the sense not to hurl himself ass-first into trash cans.

Matt stands up, and he’s removed the weirdo helmet, but the rest of the fetishwear is still in place.

“Did you fall off a roof?” He’s still pretty wary of Matt’s definition of ‘okay’ … even if it’s none of his business. Bystander, he reasons. He’s a bystander to common or garden vigilantism. He’s allowed to ask.

“Fire escape,” Matt says. “One storey.” He sounds… embarrassed? But it’s too dark to see a blush, and Foggy doesn’t want to credit himself with reading Matt correctly, like, ever for the obvious reason of ALL THE LIES.

So maybe he’s a little bitchy when he says: “You should look before you leap.”

“Right,” and there’s a hint of ‘Daredevil’ (Foggy can’t think it without the air quotes, he can’t) about his voice. “I got distracted.”

Foggy snorts.

“Happy birthday.”

“Fuck off.” It’s almost funny, he can hear the amusement in his own voice, but seriously? The fuck? There’s space worms destroying the city, a straight up witch joining the Avengers, and then there’s his vigilante ex-boyfriend swinging by to wish him a happy birthday.

Still, he’s curious, and between the lingering goodwill of the party and the safety of twenty feet and eight months of yawning space separating them, he’s sort of inured to _feelings_. It’s like poking a hole in his tooth after the novocaine sets in. “What’d you get me, a felon? Couple of petty thieves?”

“It’s been a slow night. Did you want a felon?”

“Been there, done that.” Matt _visibly shrinks_ , the tiny flower. “Not actually talking about you, but good point. Gotta say, was expecting more witty banter, or at least an _I’m Batman_ , less falling off shit.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Are you?” Ooooh, too honest, he can sense the feelings trying to break through.

Matt switches his helmet to his other hand so he can mess up his hair a little more, and that’d better be sweat and not blood making it stick up nonsensically or Foggy’s gonna have _words_. His fingers come away dark.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you bleeding?”

“No,” and Foggy still can't tell when Matt wants to be caught in a lie, can't tell if he's actually good at it, or if Foggy was the one who was - ugh, not _blind_ , fucking metaphors. Willingly deceived. There. No unintended irony there.

“You want a dressing?”

That hesitation means yes - he recognises it from one too many last eggrolls offered - so Foggy dumps the trash and heads back inside to wash his hands and get a small dressing from the drawer. When he's done Matt’s loitering outside the door, like he's a vampire who can't cross the threshold without an invitation. Or a devil. That's the more obvious comparison, but even now, with the costume right there and what looks like four days of grimy stubble, that face still says big fluffy puppy with fangs more than evil hellbeast. Maybe he should have paid more attention at church.

God, but he's pretty. Was the Devil meant to be pretty?

“Keep still,” he says, though Matt’s basically frozen in the light from the doorway and the suit doesn’t seem to lend itself to rustling, what with the whole sculpted to his every muscle look. In the light the cut looks nasty - not too deep, but long and just at the edge of his hairline, where everything bleeds like a bitch. He's no nurse, but he cleans it up a bit before pressing on the dressing.

He runs his thumbs along the adhesive edges to make sure it's flush against Matt’s skin. He tries hard not to think about that skin. He tries hard not to spot that Matt’s mouth is slightly open, though he's pretty sure neither of them has drawn a breath in- what? Minutes? Hours?

Without the cowl or his glasses Matt's eyes are wide and vulnerable and almost entirely pupil. He tries to ignore that too. It doesn’t go well. He pulls back one hand, but his other has ideas of its own, and he finds himself brushing his knuckles down one cheek, dragging his thumb past Matt’s earlobe, and it's only when he feels Matt’s quick inhale against his lips that he catches up to his body’s plan.

Matt’s lips and nose are cool, but his mouth is warm, and Foggy has his hand curled around the back of his neck. Matt’s still in the alley and Foggy’s still in the door, and the step gives him a few inches of height advantage, so he brings his other hand up under Matt’s jaw, tilts his chin up. The kiss drags on, soft and shallow, until Matt rocks back on his heels.

“This is a bad idea. You’re drunk.” Yeah, that one makes his mouth quirk a little.

He has an easy answer: “It’s my birthday. What’s your excuse?”

The horrorshow shrugs. “I’m Matt Murdock.”

He doesn’t mean to kiss him again. He wants to, and he does, but he doesn’t _mean_ to. Tells himself he doesn’t mean it. Because he doesn’t mean all of it - this isn’t them, again, this isn’t a thing. It’s a selfish moment. There’s freedom in drink, and he briefly, so briefly, doesn’t care how, what Matt feels about it.

But there’s something - something about that name, the cocky way he says it, the ache in him is just too much. For a moment. Just a moment.

Matt groans a sound into his mouth, like wood splitting, and yanks him outside. The door clangs shut behind him and Matt presses his shoulders against the brickwork, their old rhythm only a little slowed by the alcohol settling in Foggy’s legs (and not his head, he tells himself) and several yards of stab-proof leather.

It’s not nice. Maybe it’s the leather suit, the lingering part of the man that’s Daredevil, not Matt, or maybe it’s that both of them know alleys aren’t the place for soft, kind kisses, or maybe it’s Foggy, still angry when he gets his mouth on Matt’s jaw, practically the only part of him still recognisable in that stupid costume, and _bites_. It’s not nice, or good, or even really fun, Foggy’s knees leaden as he lets Matt get a thigh between his.

Matt’s more keyed up than he is, all heat and force, and Foggy clings on for the ride, quite literally, grinding down on Matt’s thigh as Matt rips off his gloves with his teeth. He starts to shove Foggy’s shirt up, but the brick against his skin is a rough scrape, and though he’s not had any work done on his back done recently, he’d rather not graze it to shit, thanks very much, so Foggy tugs it back down and Matt has to settle for groping his ass.

Which, to be fair, he does with as much glee and aplomb as ever. Matt’s thrusts are quick and uneven - _desperate_ hangs on the tip of Foggy’s tongue, too cruel to be said -

“I missed you,” he hears Matt mutter into his shoulder, and he shakes his head, hips still pistoning, pants out:

“We’re not-”

“I know-” Matt says back, neither of them missing a beat, and Foggy drags him back into a kiss with a rough hand on his jaw so they can’t say anything else stupid, anything else that will make his stomach roll and roil.

When he comes, he’s out of it for maybe a few seconds, nothing more - not really the most staggering orgasm of his life, with mould leeching cold through his shirt at his back, his stomach twisting itself into knots, and, oh yeah, his emotions lining up to give him a kicking. Matt’s not touching him any more, and when he opens his eyes he’s a few feet away, stock still.

The cowl and his gloves are under his arm. Huh. Maybe if he’d kept his eyes shut a little longer, Matt would’ve been gone. Maybe that would have been better than the silence that stretches out as Foggy tries to catch his breath and say something, anything, that won’t devastate them both.

The words don’t come. Eventually he digs into his pocket for the keys to the back door and turns to open it. There’s a scuffle, a clang on the escape, and by the time he glances back to the alley, it’s empty.

He makes it three steps into the shop before he’s back outside to vomit behind the trash cans. It only makes him feel worse to realise that, unless he was running real fast, Matt heard him.

* * *

It’s not a week later he finishes up before lunch and a wild Karen appears outside the shop door, lurking extremely conspicuously. She hands him a coffee. “I swear I didn’t make it myself,” which, yeah, the Starbucks logo was a clue. “Can I walk you, um, well, wherever?”

“Sure, Kare-bear.” Foggy’s a little at a loss, but there’s a new bagel place just his side of crappy that he’s been meaning to try out, so he turns his feet and lets her join him. He makes it half a block in uncharacteristic silence before she grabs his arm.

“I'm sorry. I fucked up. I should've returned your calls, or come round, or something. I just- No. No excuses. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.” She sounds determined and furious.

“People take sides in break ups, Karen. And he’s your friend, and your boss, and he saved you from a murder charge. I gave you a shitty nickname and introduced you to tequila, it doesn’t really match up.”

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better about it, Foggy. I mean, I’m pretty sure you can’t, but you’re trying ‘cause you always do, and this sentence had a point, I swear, but I’m just going to swing back to I’m sorry.” Another few steps in silence and then- “It’s just, when it happened, I thought- he was such a mess, I mean, physically. And the apartment-”

He stops dead, inches from a crosswalk. “You thought I _hit_ him?”

“No! Fuck, Foggy, no. I just. I didn’t understand how you could leave when he was- like that.”

Well. He can't exactly explain. They trudge on for half a block.

“Did you sleep with him?” He doesn't even mean to ask it until it's out there, but at least it sounds more curious than accusatory. (Probably. Okay, it sounded bad.)

“No! I- there was a moment, once, after Ben died-” She says the name with such feeling, and Foggy doesn’t even know who she means for a minute. There’s so much he’s missed, Christ. “But God, no, I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t do that to _him_.” She pauses. “Kirsten, maybe, did. That. Things have been weird with them for months.” Her mouth folds down into a frown. “They both started lying to me a while ago, about dumb stuff, meetings, whatever. And they haven’t stopped. I know there’s attorney-client stuff, but it’s more than that, you know?”

“Oh boy, do I know.” But it’s not his secret to spill, is it? “I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t really want to get wrapped up in Matt-stuff.” Oh, he _does_ , he so does, that is the problem. “I missed _you_.” And that’s true too. “Let’s talk about you. What’s breaking news in the world of Karen Page, Badass at Large?”

She laughs, thin and tight. “Oh, nothing much. Secretary stuff. I’m boring, really.” Foggy’s sceptical look has been honed, he’s worked hard on it, it delivers results: “Really! I’m boring now. Maybe not before I left New York. Maybe not before I came back-”

“Maybe not during the case against Fisk?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know that I helped so much there. I mean, we did a lot, but it was all Daredevil in the end-”

“Oh, don’t, I hate that asshole!” It comes out like a joke, and that’s strange, that’s not _okay_ , he does hate Daredevil. Totally, utterly, definitely not wavering on that because of one tiny frottage incident. He clears his throat. “Uh, maybe not work stuff? Too much-”

“Right, of course! Well, um, I have an interesting and varied personal life that is definitely not mostly, um, filing and researching and dive bars. Um. I’ve been thinking of getting a new tattoo? Newish, I mean, a cover-up-”

“Oh, thank God.” He takes her hand, turns it over so the gun on her wrist is visible. “It’s been killing me, how much this doesn’t work, Kare-bear. The artist deserves, like, nil points.”

She laughs, a little, but then she bites her lip. “Actually, I kinda meant the Plath on my hip. Because, you know, Plath. I’m not seventeen any more. But- this one bothers you? It bothers me, but- I don’t know, I thought maybe it _should_. Upset me. A bit. Cause it’s not me, but maybe it is and- I’m not making sense, am I?”

“Do you like it?” he asks, and it’s just the two of them, her hand in his, two still points in a tide of New York foot traffic.

“I hate it.” Her grimace smooths out into a smile as he rubs a thumb over the ink, but it’s still tight, still too many teeth. “I hate it.”

“Then we fix it. You don’t have to live with something that makes you unhappy, Karen.”

“Are we talking about Matt again?” she asks, half wry, half soft. He keeps her wrist in his hand for a second, stares at the gun snug beneath his fingers to avoid looking her in the eye.

“No,” he decides, and his voice is all soft, all fuzzed over, and it might even tremble. “No, we’re not.”

Angry, definitely. Hurt, sure. But unhappy? Living without Matt has done that.

Karen reclaims her wrist, takes his arm, and marches them to the nearest falafel place. She makes them sit, makes him order the wrap he wants, not the salad he should have, and he sketches potential cover-ups on napkins until there are enough smiles in their voices that when they hug goodbye it’s just a hug, and not a clutch.

Carla’s tidying with furious purpose when Foggy gets back to the shop. Kate and Rob both give him warning eyebrows as he sneaks up to the appointment book.

“What you up to, Franklin?” Carla asks, and he cringes, can’t help it, the combination of his first name and the Disapproving Italian Grandmother tone she manages to use despite being 23 is too much for his spine not to buckle, a little.

“Booking in Karen for next Thursday. Two hours, give or take.”

She hums, a drawn out sceptical note. “Just a tattoo?”

“Well, I could throw in a piercing, but clients hate when I surprise them with new holes in their bodies.”

She dusts the card machine with vigour, and then asks, light, casual, _aha_ , “So, she don’t want her old job back?”

Foggy stares at her, mouth agape, for a moment. “No, Carla, she doesn’t. And even if she did, it’s _not available_.”

She stares at him, hard, and sometimes it’s difficult to remember she’s young, on her eighth job since dropping out of high school, that a stupid number of places in New York want a GED and a background check, that she needs Nelson’s almost but never quite as much as it needs her.

When Karen comes back, Carla’s almost achingly polite, but there’s still a shadow behind her eyes that Foggy resolves to fix with a bonus, and a raise to follow. He might have to cut back on some of his discounts, or days off, but hell. She’s worth it.

Karen’s as much of a pro in the chair as she used to be, sitting in the window and winking at passersby to drum up new business. They turn the gun into a robot with shoulderpads. It suits her.

* * *

The end of summer rolls into New York with a stifling heat. Foggy’s always been one to walk everywhere - sure, it keeps him mostly to the neighbourhood, but it means he knows these streets like his own art, could sketch them from memory without a thought. But the warmth brings everyone else out - teenagers hanging out of windows, friends smoking together on stoops, unbusy, unhurried, enjoying their city. His mom’s friends stop him in the street, tut disapprovingly at the ragged hems on his t-shirts.

In a sea of crop tops and shorts, he sees his flash art wink at him from shoulders and hip bones - Cap’s shield, Thor’s hammer, the streak of a purple arrow across a bicep. His regulars wave; the casual clients look at him without recognition. It doesn’t matter. They’re still his as much as he is theirs; they are all Hell’s Kitchen.

And when in the chair clients want to talk about their resident superhero, well. He doesn’t change the subject so quickly now.

He doesn’t see Matt again, not properly. Once, when she’s running late, he steels himself to meet Karen at the firm’s office, loiters outside the door. A shadow falls across the glass, lingers for a minute. Two. Foggy keeps his breathing steady. The shadow is long gone by the time Karen joins him.

It’s a brief interruption in what Foggy is tentatively calling the new normal. More fool him; the next one is much more dramatic.

Carla calls him out to the front, with a note in her voice and a twist to her mouth that spells trouble. At the desk, there’s a beautiful woman waiting for him.

Really, that alone should have tipped him off.

“Mr Nelson, I was hoping I could talk to you.” He realises it’s very American of him, but the only identity he can pin to her accent is ‘European’. “I want one of your tattoos.”

He looks at her. Her arms are bare in a top just this side of too fashionable for business wear. There’s not a mark on them, and though he can’t see the rest of her, he’d be willing to bet there’s no ink under any of her skin. “No you don’t.”

He's not sure why he turns to leave again, it's rude, and his mom taught him better than that, but something makes him uncomfortable, here, in the middle of his own shop.

He gets it a moment later, when the woman shoots out a hand to grip him by the elbow, firm and strong, with a sharp nail pressing a line into the soft skin inside his arm. Her smile is like a blade being unsheathed. “No, I don’t. My name is Elektra Natchios, shall we talk in private?”

Her nails dig in just a little further and her smile widens, like she's delighted he's fat. No, not like - that's exactly what she is. It's not been so long since high school that Foggy's forgotten that look.

He shows her to the office, which is still too small for both of them to sit down. She sits, and Foggy leans against the formica table that is his desk and wonders what he did, exactly, to deserve Matt Murdock’s mess in his life.

She crosses her legs, and if this were a Bond movie, or a thriller maybe, this would be when she’d say ‘I’m a very rich woman,’ and start monologuing. But it’s New York, it’s real, and she doesn’t need to say a word for Foggy to know she could buy the ground from under him. She doesn’t need to speak to be intimidating.

So he does what he always does. He talks. “If you’ve come to scare me off, you’re about nine months late.”

“You know who I am, then.”

“I’ve heard of you. Don’t really care to know more.” _Lie_ , he thinks. Maybe she’s got freaky sense powers too, who can tell?

“I do. I’ve seen your work, it’s very good. The one on his back’s not quite clear, but the others, the quotation especially, are very compelling. Brings a new meaning to knowing him biblically.” He hates her. Viciously, at once, and she smiles like she knows. “I like your superhero designs too, but you’re missing one.”

“Antman’s never been an official member of the Avengers. And he’s hard to draw to scale. Also no one wants Antman tattoos, not even ironically.”

“Funny. You’re funny. I’d wondered.”

He hears the _what he saw in you_ that completes her sentence, but doesn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction. At least, he hopes he doesn't. His upper lip might wobble, or curl, but that's what the misery beard is there to conceal.

At least he's in control of his voice when he says, “I don't think there's anything more I can help you with.”

Elektra smiles again and he imagines blacking out her teeth.”Yes. Thank you. You've been very helpful.” She's even a dick about that, with a heavy patronising lilt. He doesn't stand to see her out, but wishes he'd read that BusinessInsider piece about power moves Katie had sent him. Folding his arms and staring past her until she leaves seems a little toddlerish.

He comes out of the office once he's heard the front door go, once he's sure she's gone. Everyone - Ben, Carla, Rob - gives him a once over, checks he's okay with a look, and it's not until Rob holds out a cigarette and he declines that Foggy realises he's shaking.

That he's afraid.

He pulls out his cellphone, heads to the back of the shop, and dials.

“Hello, McDuffie and Murdock, Karen speaking, how can I help you?”

“Hello, I would like to speak to the biggest asshole you have on the books.”

“I’m afraid he’s at lun- Oh, wait, Mr Murdock’s just come back into the office, I could put your call through to him?”

“Sounds like a total dickhead, go ahead.” He wonders if Matt can hear him already, knows who’s on the end of the line. Well, it’s nothing he wouldn’t say to his face.

“Certainly sir. Please hold for a moment.” Almost the second the call clicks through, his cellphone dings with a text from her: _???!!!?!_

The call connects. “Matt.”

“Foggy.” If Matt had heard him through Karen’s phone and his freaky senses, he doesn’t sound well prepared.

“I just-” he has to take a breath, remind himself that he's fine, why is he making such a big deal about this? But he remembers the threat of her. He remembers most of all, another shop, another time, and Matt asking for it to _scar_. Yeah, he's scared.

Doesn't mean he has to show it, though. Especially when, for once, Matt can't hear his heartbeat. So he pushes all the bravado he has into an almost lazy drawl: “Elektra came to see me. She seems terrifying,” he adds, because he always has to push his luck.

“Where? The shop?” It’s businesslike - brusque, almost. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t _that_. He starts to feel silly for calling - maybe it was just a bad break up, maybe Elektra’s nothing but a scary heiress with a cutting smile, but honestly, Matt’s a _ninja_ , so what are the odds?

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for calling,” Matt says, and it’s sincere but just as curt, and then he _hangs up_. Foggy stares at his phone for a few seconds, like maybe he cut off the call himself, but there’s no call back. He wanders back to the others, a little dazed, a little angry, and only slightly distracted from the jitters playing themselves out in the hairs on his neck, the tips of his fingers.

More fool him for looking to Matt for reassurance. So much for your friendly neighbourhood superhero.

 _Vigilante_ , he reminds himself, far, far too late.

“Can I-?” Rob holds out the cigarette without another word and Foggy takes it gratefully and heads to the back alley to light up.

He doesn't smoke any more - never really did to begin with, just embarrassed himself as a teenager trying to look suave - but the comfort of a cigarette in his hands, between his lips, lingers. It's not even the nicotine now, his synapses have been starved long enough to get over the addiction - it's more like a comfort blanket. It reminds him of being seventeen and uncool and watching hot, skinny boys and girls roll their own as they pretended their uniforms didn't give them away as rich kids from the upper east side.

His phone pings. Karen.

_So you and Matt are talking again?_

_For all of thirty seconds_ , he texts back. _I think I was on the money with asshole_ , he types, but before he can send that one, Thor the God of Thunder crashes into existence above him.

Or, like, someone drops onto the fire escape, it _sounded_ like thunder, Thor is basically local, it was a fine assumption. Instead it’s Matt. Which is kind of even more surprising.

“Did you just… fall from the sky? Cause that’s not exactly sticking with the horny branding. I mean horned, hornéd, aw, fuck.” There are no horns at all, actually. Matt’s in a suit - a suit-suit, not a super-suit. Vigil-suit. Whatever. Dude is wearing a jacket and tie. For _parkour_.

Matt swings down off the fire escape to the ground, and compared to the last time that acrobatics and Matt met this alley, it looks effortless. In fact, in the daylight it’s damn impressive. Unfortunately, Foggy’s too busy remembering the last time Matt was in the alley to be swooning. More flushed and embarrassed. It’s a familiar look, he can wear it well.

“Roof,” Matt says by way of explanation, before he crowds Foggy back against the wall, and yeah, this is very reminiscent of mistakes past. He doesn’t even look out of breath, the asshole, though there’s a slight hint of sweat by his temples, at his collar. But God help him, even his tie is still in a perfect knot. “Are you okay?”

“So you ran here? In your suit?” Foggy tries to quirk an eyebrow. It doesn’t go well, but he’s not sure what Matt’s radar can pick up, facially. Dude dated Elektra, so possibly a lot. Also Foggy, but, hey, not the day to throw his self-esteem in the dumpster alongside everything else.

“I don’t keep the costume at the office. Are you okay?” Matt repeats, and Foggy has to drag his mind back to the here and now. The here being approximately three inches from Matt’s face.

“I’m fine,” he answers automatically. Then, because that makes calling Matt, Matt _running_ to help him, all the more pathetic on his part and ridiculous on Matt’s, he adds: “She- There was a vibe. Like, a she could kill me vibe? Not would kill me, necessarily, but could? Possibly with her teeth.”

Matt exhales shakily, but also _smiles_ , so Foggy has no read on this. “Yes, that’s… accurate. She’s not a safe person for you to be around.”

Foggy wants to ask ‘but she is for you?’ but he has some idea of what overstepping looks like, even if Matt doesn’t. Instead he says, “Yeah, I picked up on that. I don’t have _super senses_ but four of mine said dangerous.”

“Four?”

“I didn’t taste your ex, Murdock.” Another smile, wider, and Foggy’s been remiss, hasn’t been checking, because apparently there’s another hole in his armour. Quick as a flash, though, the smile gives way to a frown and Foggy can feel safe again.

“So she touched you.”

Foggy blinks. Blinks again. “Was that your _Daredevil_ voice?”

“I don’t have a- You know what, yeah, it was. I’m going to fix this. She’s gone now, I can’t hear her-” and that, that does help, knowing that makes him feel a little safer, even if the _heartbeat recognition_ thing is as creepy as ever- “I’ll get her to back off. She doesn’t _touch you_.” Matt’s practically growling and Foggy-

Foggy really doesn’t mean to be a little turned on.

“Um,” he manages eloquently. “Thank you.” Matt gives him a smile so bright it takes a moment to remember it’s not years ago, with the idiot kid in Josie’s shop. But now he can see that Matt’s smiles have a lot of teeth, a hint of threat. It doesn’t make them any less heartstopping. He smiles back.

When Matt makes his way up the fire escape again, with what looks like even more Olympic-level athletics, there’s maybe a little swooning. Barely anything. It’s normal to swoon across a threshold. And inside, Foggy does have a quick mental word with himself. Human disaster. Liar. _Dangerous_.

His phone buzzes again. A final, belated text from Karen: _But you called him_.

He can’t judge the tone. It could mean anything. He’s got a feeling it’s everything.

* * *

Josie’s got a lot to say about rich, interfering, no good, too much money, not enough sense _bitches_ when she next comes in, which means Rob’s been gossiping again, and possibly listening at keyholes. Foggy hums noncommittally, too focused on the colour work he’s doing, covering up one of her scars from the bombing, and all too aware that looking her in the eye is how she steals secrets from his brain.

“She had a point though,” she concludes, and Foggy’s forced to look up at her face, the question on his lips. She looks back steadily. There go the secrets. “Daredevil stock art. It’s flying off the walls at other shops, you know that. I know you don’t like vigilantes, I know you don’t want to do Jones stuff-”

“Find me one guy that wants her face who isn’t a total creeper-” he protests. Besides, it’s weird using a mugshot as a reference.

“-but come on, Daredevil’s created a brand. A not copyrighted brand that he can’t claim intellectual property rights over ‘cause he’s an illegal crime fighter who couldn’t take us to court.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, “ he mutters. “But I take your point. It is our God given right, nay our duty, to exploit this marketable entity for all he’s worth.” He hesitates. “I did one of him way back when he was getting started for - I guess, one of his customers? I’ve worked up a couple of things since, we can look through my sketchbook when we’re done here.”

“And when’s that going to be, huh? No need to go slow, I’m a big girl.”

“Hey, no backseat driving in my chair,” he warns, and she grins at him.

“Atta boy.”

He hands over the relevant sketchbook with a sheet of aftercare instructions, because he can be a little shit sometimes. He doesn’t expect to hear about it for a while.

She turns up at his apartment before he leaves for work the next morning.

“Wha?” he manages, as she rolls her shoulder to work a kink out of it. “Did the shop burn down?” His heart races. “Wait, did it _actually-_ ”

“No, idiot.” She shoves the sketchbook into his chest. “I wanted to get this back to you asap and smack you up the side of the head for giving it to me in the first place.” Which she does, fair enough, he was warned.

“What?” he asks, hurt in the emotions as well as the physical. “I thought they were decent!”

“Take another look.”

So he does. First page has some interlocking DDs, various NY ♥ DD designs, nothing spectacular, but perfectly respectable stock art. To be honest, some of them take him by surprise - his 3am drawing sessions never really stick in his memory. There are a couple of outlines of Daredevil, face always in shadow, but nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to imagination and the few grainy photographs.

The next few pages are variations on the theme - red horns in the dark, in the New York skyline, Lady Justice with her scales and a billy club instead of a sword. The last one he’s worked up to a full page, modelled for a chest piece, shades of grey but for the billy club and a red blindfold. Foggy’s about to flip on to figure out what’s got Josie so het up when he realises.

It’s not a piece for a Daredevil fan. It’s a piece for Matt. He swallows, and tries to ignore the loving detail paid to the blindfold, to the sweep of her gown, as he turns the page.

A sketch of Matt’s glasses and his boxing gloves shines on the page before he slams it shut. “Fuck. Fuck. _Fuuuuck_.”

“Yeah, you’re an idiot. Guess it answers the question of what he did.”

“Everyone just assuming he cheated on me was great for the self-esteem,” he grumbles, but he’s too disappointed in himself to really put effort behind it.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Josie’s sarcasm is always thick, but she’s really laying it down now, “obviously we should have assumed vigilantism was the cause of your extended woes.”

“Lying, Josie. Lying. Although, yeah, the beating up people was also a negative. Cause, you know, illegal and immoral and other things.”

“Please, you think Jones is cool-”

“Uh, because she is, and also no I don’t, and also Matt’s not cool, he’s a dork-” He stops. He sounds too damn fond. He sounds _heartsick_.

Josie’s eyes are far too kind for his liking. Doesn’t suit her, even with her mouth turned down in its usual grimace.

“You should call him.”

He doesn’t.

He calls Karen instead. She meets him for coffee days later, and he can see her hair blowing bright in the wind from half a block away. By the time he reaches her, Matt and Elektra Natchios and truly everyone else in the world feel like ghosts, whispers, nothing to the glow in her eyes.

Gone is the woman who fled New York when the roof came down. Looking at her he can’t see a trace of the teenager who arrived at Josie’s in need of a job, of a name, of a mark on her skin to steer by. She’s incandescent.

“Karen-”

“Foggy!” She launches herself into his arms and it’s like she’s light as air, like she’s flying. “I just got a job at the Bulletin!”

“Holy shit!”

Whatever he’d planned to talk to her about - and he can admit he hadn’t got much further than ‘Why Matt? Matt _why_?’ - evaporates under the immediate need to celebrate. They divert to Clint’s, to the same sticky booth they’ve shared for years, on and off. Karen starts describing everything she’s been holding back on - more investigations around Fisk, and something to do with a veteran, and _holy shit_ she’s really an investigative journalist, amazing - and Foggy orders in the good liquor.

He can’t follow all of it, the web she’s drawn, but it’s scary and exciting and bloody. It occurs to him, slowly, that he’s not seen her so passionate about something since she was the receptionist at Josie’s, trying to set him up with a dork in a Columbia hoodie.

“Have you told Ma- I mean, have you given notice yet?” he asks, and she looks a bit bashful, but still enjoying every moment.

“Not yet. I’ll miss them but- you know, they both see me as the girl in the jail cell, you know? The damsel in distress. Kirsten will go toe-to-toe with anyone, but the second I want to take a risk it’s too dangerous to consider. And Matt’s _worse_ , if you can believe it.”

“Oh I fully can. They’ll miss you, though. The best of the lot.”

“You might be a little biased there.”

“Maybe less than you think,” he replies, and he can see the questions form in her eyes, like stars. But she doesn’t ask. Instead, she stretches her arm across the table and takes his hand, grips it tight in hers. Her robot winks at him from her wrist, and Foggy can feel it deep, in his blood, what she wants for him. For them both.

He taps the neck of his beer against hers, and asks about the new job some more, until Katie closes up the store and joins them, Carla, Ben and Jennifer on her heels.

Somewhere halfway through the night Foggy finds himself walking back from the bathroom and sees them all like a snapshot from across the room: Josie leaning halfway across the bar to prod Clint’s chest and kiss him in the same moment; Katie and Carla hustling at darts against regulars who should know better; Ben and Jen showing Karen the 12-week scan; and for a moment, he couldn’t be happier.

Except, he _could_.

* * *

“I'm sorry, kid, I'd be in if I could.” Josie hacks up what sounds like half of a lung and Foggy edges the phone further away from his ear, just, like, in case Apple are trialling some new water effects via handsets. Immersive calls or something. “And I'd rearrange, but, you know, special accommodations, she’s visually impaired and travel’s a bitch, so-”

“No, it's okay. It's just a bit of colour and another aftercare run-through?”

“Yeah, I did the shading already. You can compliment me once you've seen it, but it's damn good.”

“It always is.”

Carla doesn't look surprised when he walks in on his day off, just starts getting the appointment book open, which means he's the last one to know that he's taking on Josie’s load for the day. Honestly, it's like people think he's a soft touch. “I gotta go now, don't wanna keep your girl waiting.”

“I can't believe you're doing this,” Carla hisses, and woah, okay, maybe he's kind of a pushover, but he's not judgement worthy. And it's Josie, who wouldn't take a sick day unless her organs were failing, or her grip. He gives her a ‘You're weird but okay’ look, normally reserved for Katie, and she mutters “Backroom,” at him like she thinks he's an idiot. Which, yeah, okay.

It's three steps to the door. One to get the paperwork the right way round, one to almost drop it, and one to actually look down and read the name, Maddie Murlock, and he's not stupid, he's really not, but his right hand doesn't care that his brain is screaming, because hey, muscle memory and a door! It knows doors! Doors open like this!

Matt’s shrugging out of his shirt just as the door swings open with such perfect timing he can only have been waiting for the opportune moment. And yeah, okay, Foggy's eyes skid down, because Josie was right, the tattoo is good, it suits him. And, right, fine, if his gaze drops a little more, well, he really had been in a very good relationship with those abs once upon a time. And Matt can't tell he's looking.

Guilty, he jerks back to look at Matt's face. Oh, shit, Matt can definitely tell he's looking.

Urgh. If his hands and eyes are traitors at least Foggy's feet are on board with his brain, finally taking him two steps back.

“Foggy-”

“If you'll give me a moment, Ms Murlock,” he says, acid sweet, closing the door on Matt's cringing face.

He presses redial. To her credit, she picks up.

“Now, Foggy-”

“What the fuck, Josie.”

(The studio doors are designed to be semi-soundproof, but after that shameless display of shirt shimmying Foggy's under no illusions that he's having a private conversation. Fine. Let none of them be under any illusions about this.)

“You two need to talk, and the only time I saw you manage that, you had a machine in your hand and he was showing skin.”

“Josie-”

“Is he showing skin?”

“Josie!”

“That’s a yes.”

“That’s irrelevant! What are you doing, why are you trying to force-”

“I don’t want to force anything, Fog. Have this be the last conversation, if you like. If you want. But you’re killing yourself drawing this out, calling him, _drawing_ him. Look, I owed him one, but I’d like to think this is as much for you as for him.”

“What the hell do you owe him?” Foggy asks, before he remembers the insurance that wouldn’t pay out, and the law student who managed a favour for a woman he barely knew on the basis of a few words.

“Foggy, please.”

When he reenters the studio room, Matt’s sitting contrite as a choirboy, hands on his knees. His shirt is folded beside him, one edge crumpled. Foggy manages to keep his eyes up this time, until Matt looks down at his feet, and then his gaze catches the raised edge of a scar running down the back of his neck, just where the collar of a shirt would hide it.

There’s another under his collar bone. One between his ribs. A slice taken out on his arm, through the boxing gloves Foggy put there years ago. It’s healed up fine, a little jagged, maybe, the lines aren’t as smooth, but- God. Matt has so many scars. So many.

Skirting them all, splayed across his chest, is the new tattoo.

Josie does fine work, especially in greyscale. It’s Foggy’s design, blind Justice, but much improved, the shading exquisite. Where Foggy had imagined splashes of red, she’s been braver, stuck to black and white and grey - so much grey Foggy half suspects there’s a message in it, and not one for Matt.

In her hand is a sword, not a billy club, which is just as well. The original might as well have been letters eight inches high saying “I’m Daredevil”.

(Fuck, Matt would probably get that tattoo)

The very tip of the sword rests against a raised white line gashing down from Matt’s collarbone.

God, he has _so many scars._

Foggy swallows.

“Ok, we’re gonna do this in, like, total silence, mkay?”

Matt says nothing. Then, as if he can sense Foggy’s eyeroll - can he? Can he hear _eyeballs?_ \- he nods sharply and lies back on the bench.

Foggy bites back half a dozen idle natterings as he preps his machine. He doesn’t care about Matt’s day. Matt’s work. Matt’s life. Instead, he focuses on prepping the ink, to fill in the blank spaces on the design - hints of blue to add depth to the grey, mostly. His fingers hover, for just a moment, over the reds. Carmine. But Josie’s design is better. Sometimes it’s not about contrast, but shading.

For all that they’re both old pros at this now, at inking and taking ink, at weathering awkward silences, at skin on warm skin, Matt still breathes out shakily when Foggy checks in with a press of fingers against his arm. “I’m just gonna use a wipe, ok? Don’t- shit, look, you can talk and stuff, don’t fucking _suffer_ in silence, but can we just keep it professional?”

“There’s a first time for everything, I guess,” Matt mutters, wry, and Foggy glares at him. Perhaps in response, Matt’s very good under the wipe, stays relaxed even as Foggy switches on the machine and starts his work.

Christ, but he can’t work without talking. “I, uh, heard about Karen. I mean, she told me. About the job.”

Matt’s mouth twists. “Yeah, I couldn’t hold it together enough for her.”

Foggy has to nudge him with an elbow for that, right in the self-pity. “Or maybe making your very first client the secretary wasn’t the soundest hiring strategy? I love Karen, but she’s not a lifer. Not at that, anyway. You heard her talk about the Bulletin lately? She lights up.”

“I can hear the smile in her voice, yeah.” Mat’s mouth works for a second, loud in the silence. “I don’t want to lose her too.”

“You haven’t yet,” he replies. That _too_ , Jesus. What is he supposed to do with that? He adjusts his grip around the machine for a long line skirting down the edge of a rib. “Remember who you’re talking to, she ran out on me years before you. No one has to be lost forever. And if you told her about the- the thing. She’d get it. More than, uh, other people who will remain nameless, at least.”

Matt starts shaking his head so vigorously Foggy has to lift the machine clear away from his skin. “She gets into enough danger as it is without me putti-”

“See, that’s a shitty argument. It’s Karen. She’s going to go for maximum danger whatever she knows. Didn’t the nuns ever tell you nice girls don’t have tattoos like that?”

He’s going for a smile. God, how he wants Matt’s smile. “They said something like that, yeah. But they were wrong. Nice _boys_ do have tattoos like that.” And there it is, that smile - small, and open and just a little secretive, like Matt’s got a taste on his tongue he’s not ready to share; Foggy’s throat dries up. He reapplies himself to his work, and tries to ignore the fact he’s shading down Matt’s sternum as the heavy silence builds.

And builds.

And- “Did you mean that, about no one being lost forever?” Oh wow, okay, heavy silence replaced with heavy subject, _so much better._ “Is there anyone you wouldn’t welcome back?”

Heat flares on the back of his neck. “I dunno, that Fisk guy sounds like a real villain,” he jokes, weak.

“Foggy.”

“Matt…” Fuck, but he hates it when Josie’s right. “I- I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it.”

There, there, it’s out, and now Matt can clarify that actually he meant _Elektra_ , and in fact they’re already married, and they have a terrifying ninja baby on the way, in the ninja equivalent of a suburbs McMansion and Foggy can just become one with the floor. Very Zen, very chill-

“If we’re laying all our cards on the table,” says Matt, “I should probably - definitely - be upfront about how I’m going to try to win you over. Win you back.”

Foggy attempts a derisive snort, but his throat won’t agree with him, too caught up in proceedings, so it sounds more like a squeak. “Win me? Like a _case_?”

“Like a prize. Like the only thing worth having. But-” And Matt’s voice gets that hint of round, choked sadness that he probably thinks sounds like gravitas but is all too easily recognised as Catholic angst “-but if you don’t want me to, if you want me to- to get lost, just, you know, say the word. Say it now.”

At first, all Foggy can offer is a stunned silence. Well, a connoisseur of silences might recognise a hint of disbelief, a dollop of confusion, but the general tone is stunned. Foggy doesn’t believe him for a second - Matt Murdock would follow him to the ends of the earth to worry at this loose end, to find some way to assuage his guilt, and keep it at the same time. But the streak of cynicism in Foggy is swamped by something greater, a swooping in his stomach that’s old and new at once.

He flexes his fist around the machine and then lays it aside. “You, uh, make it sound like we’re getting married. Speak now or forever hold your peace, yadda yadda.”

Matt shrugs one bare shoulder. His face is so open it’s guileless, disarming. “I was expecting to have to do more grovelling before we got engaged, but sure.”

“Oh, you need to do so much more grovelling. Wait, no, did I just accept the premise of the argument? Because I do not. Necessarily. I mean. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I don't know, this became AP debate very quickly, I'm confused.” Yeah, that's it. “I'm confused, Matt. I- When we broke up, you didn’t- I mean, we broke up. It- I’m not going to say it was mutual, but you didn’t come after me then.”

“Because you were right.”

Well, that’s music to his ears. “Yeah, sure, see where you’re coming from there, except, like - about what?”

“That we couldn’t work, then. I’d lied to you. I … would have kept lying to you.”

“And now there’s nothing left to lie about?”

Matt chuckles darkly. “Oh, there’s a lot. But I won’t. I know better now.” Foggy feels the speech coming, and moves the needle back before Matt heaves in a deep breath. “You were worth everything, and I couldn’t risk losing you. I appreciate the irony there - I didn’t trust you to stay, and so you left. I don’t know how I could’ve told you; I’ve thought about it; but I should’ve done it anyway.”

He can hear the but coming.

“But,” right on schedule, “I’m not sorry about any of the rest of it. Being what I am. I won’t stop.”

“I never asked you to stop,” he says, hotly.

“But you would have,” Matt answers, quick and sure. “You would have.” And Foggy can’t deny it. “It has to be both. Me and Daredevil. You have to want both.”

“No, I don’t. It’s not both, it’s just all you. I get that now.” He taps the point where Justice’s sword meets the scar with the blunt end of the machine. “This is all of you.”

“Foggy-” Matt starts to press upwards onto his elbows, and Foggy has to push him back down with one hand on his chest, careful to avoid the freshly inked skin.

“Easy, easy now, relax. We’re almost done.” He runs his left hand down Matt’s flank, instinctive, calming, but Matt catches his wrist, wraps his fingers around it.

“I hope we’re not.”

He takes a breath. Another. He twists his wrist in Matt’s grip but doesn’t break away - folds their fingers together. “We’re not.” He switches off the machine.

Matt’s quiet as he dresses the tattoo, but it’s a different sort of silence now. Foggy’s quiet too. Not awkward, not heavy. Hesitant. Anticipating.

Hopeful.

He presses the edges of the dressing down smoothly and passes Matt a wipe to clean off the beads of sweat on his collarbones, his neck. He cleans up his station as Matt pulls his shirt back on - glances up as fabric sweeps over one shoulder and knows, just _knows_ , that within days, maybe hours, he’ll kiss that skin again.

I love you. It’s there, under his skin. Under Matt’s too, in the lines he drew years ago and the lines he drew today. He can’t say it yet. But it’s there. And it doesn’t embarrass him.

He walks Matt to the door. The shop is eerie - just machines buzzing as Foggy studiously ignores the feeling of eyes on him from every corner of the room.

“Clint’s, tonight?” Matt says, just loud enough that everyone has to have caught it. But Clint’s in itself is a declaration.

“Yeah. Yeah.” His voice is heavy, but it’s like the weight drops away by saying it - like something peels away from the bottom of his lungs, his chest, evaporates. He catches a glimpse of that smile again, so often missed, so very missed, and then Matt kisses him.

It’s soft, but insistent. An apology and a promise.

Foggy shuts his eyes and lets his hand fall to Matt’s hip, presses his thumb against his shirt where he knows the words lie underneath. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. _Let_ him. Let _him_.

Another press of lips, one more, and Matt pulls away with a whisper of fingertips against his jaw. Opens the door.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“I won’t.”

Foggy stands in the door and watches him go, cane sweeping the kerb in front of him. In a moment he’ll turn; to Ben’s soft eyes and Carla’s furious sweeping; to Katie’s skepticism and Rob’s mouth tucked up in half a grin; to a roomful of clients completely baffled at the momentary spell cast on a small tattoo shop tucked in the disreputable corner of Hell’s Kitchen.

For now, though, Foggy watches Matt go, safe in the knowledge he can call him back with a word. With a whisper.

“Right then!” He claps, and all of his hardworking employees jump four inches in the air and get back to pretending to mind their own damn business. “Who’s next?”

**Author's Note:**

> Given this was finished in the Year of The Damned, I have literally never been more open to concrit. Anything that gives me a brief sense of human connection. 
> 
> Thanks for reading


End file.
